The head of MTV, Chris McCarthy, has announced that they will be changing how they refer to the VMA Moonman award.
“Why should it be a man?” McCarthy said while speaking to the New York Times. “It could be a man, it could be a woman, it could be transgender, it could be nonconformist.”
This change follows the decision to remove the gender-specific categories for awards given out at the MTV Movie and TV awards.
This year the awards for Best Actor in a Movie and Best Actor in a Show included both female and male nominees. The awards were won by Mille Brown for her performance in Stranger Things and Emma Watson for her performance in Beauty and the Beast.
Emma Watson, while giving her acceptance speech, said, "The first acting award in history that doesn't separate nominees based on their sex says something about how we perceive the human experience. Acting is about the ability to put yourself into someone else's shoes, and that doesn't have to be separated into two different categories."
McCarthy also announced a new reality show We Are They that will follow a group of gender-nonconforming young adults’ and their journey through key coming-of-age life events.
While many of these changes are very positive, there still seems to be an element of corporate pandering to these recent shifts.
MTV has recently suffered from severe dips in its ratings as it has struggled to adapt its programming to younger generations. Most of the recent announcements made by MTV, including the revival of the music-oriented TRL television program, have been done in a clear reaction to this slump.
For a network that has already done more than its fair share in promoting highly-corrosive gender roles and role models with shows like Jersey Shore, Hot Press can only hope that MTV will be doing a lot more than simply changing a few names and creating a few highly-manufactured reality TV shows.
MTV is a network that has a lot of influence in the music and entertainment industry and could promote much more effective and wide-ranging changes than this. At least, MTV used to have influence.