“The Silence Breakers” reads Time’s Person of the Year cover which doesn’t feature one persona but the people who have publicly talked about the sexual harassment they’ve encountered. Ashley Judd, Taylor Swift, Uber engineer Susan Fowler, corporate lobbyist Adama Iwi, and Isabel Pascual, a strawberry picker from Mexico. But there’s also another person in the photo who’s only indication she was there is a elbow at the edge of the cover.
You may be thinking that it’s a gatefold cover and someone fell victim to some bad cropping or someone just completely forgot to put their elbow out of the shot. Nope, the disembodied elbow is purposefully there. It represents the various unidentified women who shared their experiences of sexual abuse with Time.
Charlotte Alter, Time’s national correspondent explained how it is the elbow of a hospital worker who came to the publication about her story of sexual abuse but doesn’t wish to identify herself in publicly. Within the issue, the women who have come forward with their respective experiences of abuse are photographed with their faces turned away from the camera.
From A-list stars to your most everyday person, Time documents how sexual abuse is common and is not just a Hollywood issue. It is also not so easy to battle the stigma that victims have to face. Charlotte said, “It’s important to include people who have to stay anonymous for professional reasons, who don’t have the resources to weather what would happen if they lost their job or they couldn’t support their families. So we wanted to include people where, to really reference the risk that these women are taking by speaking out about this.”
[Refinery29]
Photo coutesy of Time
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