I’m in love. WITH THIS COAT. This coat is amazing, right? It’s Armani. It looks like Game of Thrones-meets-Star Trek. I don’t even want to look up the price. Don’t even tell me, I’m sure it’s thousands of dollars. Anyway, Cate Blanchett covers the new issue of Harper’s Bazaar Australia. It’s a great cover because A) Cate actually looks like herself and not some Elizabeth Banks fem-bot, B) the coat and C) Cate looks sassy. In the Bazaar interview, Cate talks a bit about the #AskHerMore campaign, which was introduced during this past awards season. I’ll rant about it after we read Cate’s thoughts:

Cate on the way the red carpet has changed: “Since I’ve been struttin’ the red carpet, things have changed a lot. The way women are asked about those red-carpet moments. Oh my God. It’s just a dress! People forget the fact that women are up there [at the Academy Awards] because they’ve given extraordinary performances. It’s a wonderful excuse to dress up and have F.U.N. But let’s not forget the work.”

On E!’s now-defunct mani-cam: “Next it will be, ‘What brand tampon are you wearing? How much more intimate can they get? ‘Show us your knickers’? There is a line.”

[From Bazaar Australia via TooFab]

I ranted about #AskHerMore during the Oscars recap this year and I’ll do it again here. I think it’s fine for a woman on the red carpet to refuse to answer certain questions or to hit back and say “Are you asking the men the same thing?” Do some red carpet interviewers cross the line into sexism? Sure. It’s not acceptable to ask an actress to “twirl”. But having watched the red carpet shows recreationally and professionally for years, I tend to think most of the red carpet interviewers are just trying to create interesting, watchable moments in between ID-ing the dresses. Most will just get the dress ID out of the way quickly (and believe me, the actresses are trained at this point to list all of their IDs at the top of the interview) and then ask some fun questions.

I also think that the Oscars are a HUGE international deal that can make or break designers, and millions of dollars are on the line every time an actress walks on a red carpet that significant. Most of those actresses are wearing borrowed clothes and borrowed jewelry too – part of the now-standard give-and-take system, where the celebrities get to keep or borrow thousands of dollars’ worth of clothes and jewelry because it’s worth millions’ in advertising for the designers/jewelers when the actress says “This dress is Armani, the jewels are Neil Lane.” If you don’t want to be part of that, fine. No one is forcing you to walk the red carpet!

Oh, and having watched hundreds of hours of red carpet coverage, let me tell you: there’s nothing that ruins a fun night more than an actor who wants to give a ten-minute lecture on their “process” in the middle of the red carpet. The red carpet is not Inside the Actor’s Studio. Lighten up and have some fun. But I take Cate’s point. The next time she comes onto the red carpet and says her gown is Galliano (like at the Oscars this year), ask her about Galliano’s hate speech conviction and whether wearing his clothing is her way of implicitly aligning herself with anti-Semitic hate speech. Then ask her about Woody Allen and the accusations made by Dylan Farrow. I mean, she wants to talk about something deeper, so let’s go deeper.

Photos courtesy of WENN, Bazaar Australia.