Later on in the night, Brie Larson, Sigourney Weaver, and Gal Gadot presented the award for Best Original Score. Amid jokes about starting a fight club (“the loser has to answer questions about what it’s like being a woman in Hollywood”) and paying tribute to female superheroes on-screen and off (“all women are superheroes”), they also took time to mark a history-making Oscar moment. For the first time, the conductor hired to lead the orchestra in a rendition of excerpts of the nominated scores was a woman. Don’t get me wrong — my heartfelt congratulations to Eímear Noone, who did an amazing job, and looked like a fierce gold queen doing it. But once again, this felt like the Academy trying very hard to divert our attention from the fact that for 91 years before this, they have hired men ( conducting is another field that’s been slow to promote women ). It smacks of sweaty desperation for attention over something that should, by this time, be the norm.