How That “Boys Will Be Boys” Embroidery Became the Internet’s Response to Harvey Weinstein

Rose McGowan did it. Emily Ratajkowski did it. Willow Smith did it. Colin Hanks did it. Tracee Ellis Ross and Zoë Kravitz and Adriana Lima and Sarah Hyland and Martha Hunt did it. Activists did it, brands did it, and magazines did it too. They all shared the same image: a cross-stitch that said “Boys Will Be Boys,” one that your grandma could have made, but definitely didn’t—because the second “Boys” was crossed out in angry black thread, replaced by “will be held accountable for their f—king actions.”

Solidarity on social media often rallies around a single image: the Charlie Hebdo massacre, a broken pencil; the Paris terror attacks, an Eiffel Tower peace sign; the Muslim ban, the Statue of Liberty; Standing Rock, the “Water is Life” sign. For the Harvey Weinstein scandal, in which over 45 women (and counting) have accused the movie mogul of sexual harassment or assault, it’s this embroidery, homespun and no-nonsense.

But where did it come from?

It’s the handiwork of Shannon Downey, aka @badasscrossstitch. You may have seen the Chicago native’s work before—she’s known for her “craftivism,” or making embroidered art with a political message. Her hand-sewn Women’s March sign went viral after a share from George Takei.

But “Boys Will Be Boys” is bigger than the Women’s March. It’s bigger than anything she’s ever done. The combined Instagram following of the above celebrities is just about 21 million, and that’s not counting all the companies, private accounts, and lesser-knowns that also shared it. The actual footprint is likely millions more.

“It just went, like, batshit crazy over the last couple days,” the self-proclaimed “craftivist” tells Vogue. “I’m getting texts from people who are like, holy shit Beyoncé’s mom just liked it on Tracee Ellis Ross’s Instagram post. I’m, like how do you know that? What are you talking about?”

The embroidery isn’t even new. In fact, it’s ancient in Internet years (like dog years, but one year equals 700). Downey made it in 2016, after Donald Trump’s “grab ’em by the pussy” video went public, the smoking sexist gun that wasn’t so smoking after all. “I had heard what he said, and I heard people defending him. I was enraged. So that night I stitched that—I was angry, I had some wine, and I was like, Let’s do this,” she says. “Which is why it’s all the worst stitching ever.”

The phrase “Boys Will Be Boys,” came from a childhood memory. “I have a younger brother, and he and his friends would do shit, and parents would be like, well, ‘Boys will be boys’,” she says. “I remember my mom coming home one day after he had built a campfire in the neighbor’s yard without permission. She was like, ‘I don’t ever want to hear the expression ‘Boys Will Be Boys’ again. We’re holding them accountable.’ That’s always stuck with me.”

And it stuck with a whole community of people reeling after it was revealed just how much damage Harvey Weinstein had done for decades.

In his 2011 TED Talk, Kevin Allocca, head of culture and trends at YouTube, gave three reasons why things go viral. One is tastemakers—someone famous needs to share it. Two is unexpectedness. Three is community—it needs to resonate with people, to inspire them.

Downey’s not 100 percent sure what tastemaker started this whole thing. The first celebrity she saw share it was Jonathan Tucker. Then, Colin Hanks regrammed it from Tucker. From there, its path is impossible to track, an exponential explosion in shares.

Downey says the popularity was a blessing and a curse—she loved seeing her work shared, but it was often posted without credit. “I got really upset because it was just like, this is exactly what’s wrong, right? That we just erase women,” she says. “The Internet and Instagram have created this opportunity for us to just quickly and easily share things.”

But why Downey’s work? Alloca’s theory holds up: It’s unexpected. Embroidery isn’t exactly a subversive art form, it’s traditional, the hobby of grandmas and Stepford Wives of yesteryear. That’s what makes the kicker—“held accountable for their fucking actions”—so much more jarring. It’s also the perfect mix of femininity and ferocity. Embroidery is, stereotypically, a women’s trade. Women were victims of Harvey Weinstein. But they were also the avengers. Women—the reporters, the sources—brought his house of cards tumbling down.

And for the last part, community? Between Donald Trump and Roger Ailes and Bill O’Reilly, so many were sick of what rich and powerful men were getting away with. “It’s appropriately angry. Everybody has heard their whole lives, boys will boys. We make these excuses. We create these systems where you know it is quite obvious that women and girls are always held accountable, and victim-blamed. But for boys, it’s ‘boys will be boys,’ that’s just how it is,” Downey says. “But here’s a quick, easy way to show that, even though here’s the message that we’ve been delivered since the beginning of time, we’re done with it.”

The original “Boys Will Be Boys,” Downey tells Vogue, is with a traveling feminist art exhibit, in all its drunk-stitched glory. But it doesn’t matter if it is in Boston or Chicago or Abu Dhabi. The next time a politician or a mogul or a blowhard is accused of sexual assault, it’ll reemerge, ready to do exactly what its meant to do: hold boys accountable for their fucking actions.