Yesterday, TIME Magazine named their ‘Person of the Year’. The 2017 honour went to the Silence Breakers.
The issue covers the storeys of 33 women and two men who came forward to accuse their sexual abusers. The two men are Terry Crews and Blaise Godbe Lipman.
The front cover of the magazine features Ashley Judd, one of Harvey Weinstein’s first accusers, Taylor Swift who took a DJ to court of $1 to make her point that he couldn’t get away with groping her, Isabel Pascual (who asked to use a pseudonym) and Adama Iwu of Visa and Susan Fowler of Uber who brought up sexual harassment in the their workplace. A bent arm of a sixth woman represents all those who wish to remain anonymous and those still silenced.
In the 90-year history of the magazine, women have only made the cover an astonishing eight times. Included in those few eight are two very well known (and opposite) members of the Royal Family; Queen Elizabeth and Wallis Simpson.
In 1952, Queen Elizabeth was named TIME Magazine’s choice after she ascended the throne after her father’s untimely death. The magazine picked the young queen after coming to the decision that she was “of a fresh young blossom on roots that had weathered many a season of wintry doubt. The British, as weary and discouraged as the rest of the world in 1952, saw in their new young Queen a reminder of a great past… and dared to hope that she might be an omen of a great future.”
Yet, Queen Elizabeth would have never landed the honour if it wasn’t for Wallis Simpson, the American divorcee who won the heart of Elizabeth’s uncle, King Edward VIII. Edward had to abdicate the throne to marry Wallis, meaning a young Princess Elizabeth’s father was forced to take his place, becoming King George VI.
After winning Edward’s affection, Wallis was “the most-talked-about, written-about, headlined and interest-compelling person in the world,” giving Time Magazine cause to name her the 1937 Person of the Year.
Writing of the event that unfolded to their pick, TIME said: “the news that the King, as King, wanted to marry Mrs. Simpson was the final culmination of a tide of events sweeping the United Kingdom out of its cozy past and into a more or less hectic and ‘American’ future.”
