The revolution started back in May when Emma Watson won the best actor award at the MTV Movie and TV Awards. Now the bug is catching on, although it seems like MTV is the frontrunner with the introduction of genderless categories at the VMAs.
The recently held awards celebrated artist’s achievements in a gender neutral manner which was aimed at putting all sexes on a level playing field. MTV’s move to non-gendered categories aligns with Smirnoff’s Equalizing Music initiative, which strives to drive gender parity and diversity in the music industry. This will come as good news to artists and members of other marginalised gender profiles.
The Best Female Video and Best Male Video categories have now been combined into one, simply titled Artist of the Year. This was clinched by British musical genius Ed Sheeran who is currently riding high with the smash hit Shape Of You. The category also featured heavyweights namely Ariana Grande, The Weeknd and Lorde.
The VMA’s also introduced the fight against the system category which is meant to celebrate those videos that inspire viewers to stand up and fight injustice. Videos that made the cut include Black SpiderMan by Logic ft. Damian Lemar Hudson, Big Sean’s Light, Surefire by John Legend and Alessia Cara’s Scars To Your Beautiful.
Smirnoff, the lead sponsor of the local broadcast of the 2017 MTV Video Music Awards (VMAs) in Africa, applauded the scrapping of gender categories in this year’s music video celebration.Their Marketing Manager, Kyle Lesch said,
“Music and MTV have always broken barriers and with Smirnoff bringing the broadcast of the VMAs to South Africa, ‘Everyone’s Invited’ to enjoy this historic transformation to the Awards that have been honouring the best music videos since 1984.”
