Grace Tame breaks her silence on frosty meeting with the PM
Former Australian of the Year Grace Tame has spoken out about her frosty meeting with Scott Morrison.
Ms Tame stood unsmiling next to the Prime Minister during photographs taken for her visit to The Lodge.
The photos of Grace has since gone viral, with many saying her refusal to smile was "immature".
One week on from the awkward reception, Grace took to Twitter to defend her actions.
She wrote, "The survival of abuse culture is dependent on submissive smiles and self-defeating surrenders. It is dependent on hypocrisy."
"What I did wasn’t an act of martyrdom in the gender culture war. It’s true that many women are sick of being told to smile, often by men, for the benefit of men. But it’s not just women who are conditioned to smile and conform to the visibly rotting status-quo. It’s all of us."
Grace's year-long tenure as Australian of the Year has since come to an end, as she received the honour for fighting to legally tell her story as a victim of child sexual abuse and grooming.
In doing so, she helped to overturn a Tasmanian law preventing victims from identifying themselves in the media.
Many were up in arms over the fact that Grace didn't smile to greet the PM, with journalist and The Project host Peter van Onselen labelling her "ungracious, rude and childish" in a column for The Australian.
In response to this view, many women, including Peter's co-host Carrie Bickmore, have spoken out in support of Grace, pointing out that the issue of systemic sexual assault in Australia is more important than smiling for a photo opportunity.
“Why do you feel the need to tell Grace how she should have behaved?” Bickmore asked. “But second of all, why should she stand there and smile and pretend it’s all okay when there is an absolute catastrophe on the cards here?”
Nina Funnell, the journalist behind the #LetHerSpeak campaign that allowed Ms Tame to speak out, asked on Twitter, “What exactly did they think would happen when they organised this photo op?”
“Grace Tame is not the type to lie about how she feels. And nor should we ever put her in a position where she is expected to.”
Image credits: Twitter @bairdjulie