Today, TIME Magazine made a powerful statement acknowledging the irreversible shift that occurred during 2017. “The Silence Breakers” featured five women on the cover, including celebrities Taylor Swift and Ashley Judd, who spoke out about sexual harassment and abuse.
But it also featured a sixth arm, with the owner cropped just out of sight.
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The woman was cropped out on purpose. She is an anonymous young hospital worker from Texas who TIME says is a sexual harassment victim, and one “who fears that disclosing her identity would negatively impact her family.”
She represents the thousands of women and men who haven’t yet come forward with their own stories, or are unable to do so.
“She is faceless on the cover and remains nameless inside TIME’s red borders, but her appearance is an act of solidarity, representing all those who are not yet able to come forward and reveal their identities,” wrote TIME’s Melissa Chan.
The woman told the magazine that she remembers vivid details about what happened to her.
“I thought, What just happened? Why didn’t I react? I kept thinking, Did I do something, did I say something, did I look a certain way to make him think that was O.K.?”
The cover echoes the powerful New York Magazine 2015 cover to accompany its piece on Bill Cosby, with an empty chair left among the accusers to represent the women who had not yet come forward.
The other women featured on the TIME cover include former Uber engineer Susan Fowler (whose blog post led to the ousting of Uber founder Travis Kalanick), lobbyist Adama Iwu, and Isabel Pascual, a strawberry picker and immigrant from Mexico who changed her name to protect her identity.
