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Shonda Rhimes: I Didn't Smash Through The Glass Ceiling For Women In Hollywood

By creating rich and varied roles for gay men and women of color on Scandal, Grey's Anatomy  and How to Get Away with Murder, Shonda Rhimes has almost single-handedly revolutionized modern television.

Her efforts were acknowledged yesterday at The Hollywood Reporter's Women in Entertainment breakfast, where she received the Sherry Lansing Leadership Award and brought everyone to their feet with an inspiring and audacious speech.

Though gracious in her acceptance, Rhimes insisted she hadn't broken the glass ceiling for women in Hollywood:

All of the women, white or black or brown who woke up like this, who came before me in this town. Think of them. Heads up, eyes on the target. Running. Full speed. Gravity be damned. … Running, full speed and crashing. Crashing into that [glass] ceiling and falling back. Crashing into it and falling back. Into it and falling back. Woman after woman. Each one running and each one crashing. And everyone falling."

How many women had to hit that glass before the first crack appeared? How many cuts did they get, how many bruises? How hard did they have to hit the ceiling? How many women had to hit that glass to ripple it, to send out a thousand hairline fractures? How many women had to hit that glass before the pressure of their effort caused it to evolve from a thick pane of glass into just a thin sheet of splintered ice? So that when it was my turn to run, it didn’t even look like a ceiling anymore. I mean, the wind was already whistling through  —  I could always feel it on my face. And there were all these holes giving me a perfect view to other side. I didn’t even notice the gravity, I think it had worn itself away.

So I didn’t have to fight as hard. I had time to study the cracks. I had time to decide where the air felt the rarest, where the wind was the coolest, where the view was the most soaring. I picked my spot in the glass and called it my target. And I ran. And when I hit finally that ceiling, it just exploded into dust. Like that.

Check out Shonda's full speech at the Women in Entertainment event below.

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