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My Daughter Went Viral At 3 Months Old, We Still Continue To Represent Empowering Women In History And Today
Greetings from Liberty and Jenelle (Liberty’s mom) Wexler!
Liberty is eighteen months old and I have been taking pictures of sweet Liberty dressed as positively influential women in history and present day. As recently as four months ago, Liberty was an unknown 3-month-old before Today Parents commented on a photo on Liberty’s Instagram. From there word spread through social media to groups like Good Morning America, PEOPLE, and hundreds of other outlets worldwide. She became a viral sensation within weeks!
On Liberty’s Instagram, she not only shares a photo of herself dressed as the woman, she also includes a photo of the influential woman that she is portraying and a short blurb about these woman’s accomplishments in helping to shape society for what it is today.
I am hopeful that when Liberty is older and looks back at these photos, she finds them to be fun yet informatively positive. I attempted to capture these women's essence in Liberty, the emotion of the person sometimes really can be seen in Liberty's photos. In addition, I wanted to bring attention to their specific stories, to show how important these women's actions were in helping to shape our current society for the better. I believe these women continue to inspire the young females of the present day to push boundaries and strive beyond equality. I feel it is important to pay tribute to the women who fought for and helped protect and further women's causes. I only hope these are the individuals that Liberty herself chooses to admire and aspire to be like.
I am getting such a positive response from my friends and family that they are now having fun giving me suggestions for future women to portray! I keep getting told that these photos of Liberty brighten their day and bring a smile to their faces which helps with my decision to want to continue with the photos. I have quite a few more women and their stories already in mind with costumes and future shoots in the works! (My dining room table is covered with these ideas) I also have a few other ideas for future photos that I may add to Liberty's growing portfolio...think women in the workforce portraying equality. My mind is always churning.
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Rosie The Riveter
A cultural icon of World War II, representing the women who worked in factories and shipyards during World War II, many of whom produced munitions and war supplies. These women sometimes took entirely new jobs replacing the male workers who joined the military. Rosie the Riveter is used as a symbol of American feminism and women's economic power.
Nina Simone
Nina Simone, born Eunice Kathleen Waymon was an American singer, songwriter, pianist, arranger, and activist in the Civil Rights Movement. Her music spanned a broad range of musical styles including classical, jazz, blues, folk, R&B, gospel, and pop.
She was one of the most extraordinary artists of the twentieth century, an icon of American music. She was the consummate musical storyteller, a griot as she would come to learn, who used her remarkable talent to create a legacy of liberation, empowerment, passion, and love through a magnificent body of works.
She earned the moniker ‘High Priestess of Soul’ for she could weave a spell so seductive and hypnotic that the listener lost track of time and space as they became absorbed in the moment. She was who the world would come to know as Nina Simone
In many ways, Simone's music defied standard definitions. Her classical training showed through, no matter what genre of song she played, and she drew from a well of sources that included gospel, pop and folk.
By the mid-1960s, Simone became known as the voice of the Civil Rights Movement. She wrote "Mississippi Goddam" in response to the 1963 assassination of Medgar Evers and the Birmingham church bombing that killed four young African-American girls. She also penned "Four Women," chronicling the complex histories of a quartet of African-American female figures, and "Young, Gifted and Black," borrowing the title of a play by Hansberry, which became a popular anthem.
Greta Thunberg
Greta Thunberg is a 16 years old Swedish political activist seeking to stop global warming and climate change. In August 2018, she became a prominent figure for starting the first school strike for climate, outside the Swedish parliament building. In November 2018, she spoke at TEDxStockholm, in December she addressed the United Nations Climate Change Conference and in January 2019 she was invited to talk to the World Economic Forum at Davos.
Thunberg was one of the winners of Svenska Dagbladet's debate article writing competition on the climate for young people in May 2018.Thunberg was nominated for the electricity company Telge Energi's prize for children and young people who promote sustainable development, Children's Climate Prize, but declined because the finalists would have to fly to Stockholm. In November 2018, she was awarded the Fryshuset scholarship of the Young Role Model of the Year. In December 2018, Time magazine named Thunberg one of the world's 25 most influential teenagers of 2018. On the occasion of the International Women's Day Thunberg was proclaimed the most important woman of the year in Sweden in 2019. The award was based on a survey by the institute Inizio on behalf of the newspaper Aftonbladet. Three Norwegian lawmakers nominated Thunberg for the 2019 Nobel Peace Prize. "We have proposed Greta Thunberg because if we do nothing to halt climate change, it will be the cause of wars, conflict and refugees," Norwegian Socialist MP Freddy Andre Ovstegard told AFP news agency.
"Greta Thunberg has launched a mass movement which I see as a major contribution to peace," he added.
Josephine Baker
An American-born French entertainer, activist, and French Resistance agent. Her career was centered primarily in Europe, mostly in her adopted France. During her early career she was renowned as a dancer, and was among the most celebrated performers to headline the revues of the Folies Bergère in Paris. Her performance in the revue Un vent de folie in 1927 caused a sensation in Paris. Her costume, consisting of only a girdle of artificial bananas, became her most iconic image and a symbol of the Jazz Age and the 1920s.
Baker was celebrated by artists and intellectuals of the era, who variously dubbed her the “Black Venus”, the "Black Pearl", the "Bronze Venus", and the "Creole Goddess".
Baker was the first African-American to star in a major motion picture, the 1927 silent film Siren of the Tropics.
When Adolf Hitler and the German army invaded France during World War II, Baker joined the fight against the Nazi regime. She aided French military officials by passing on secrets she heard while performing in front of the enemy. She transported the confidential information by writing with invisible ink on music sheets. After many years of performing in Paris, Baker returned to the United States.
Baker refused to perform for segregated audiences in the United States and is noted for her contributions to the Civil Rights Movement. After the war, she was awarded the Croix de guerre by the French military, and was named a Chevalier of the Légion d'honneur by General Charles de Gaulle.
Baker continued to fight racial injustices into the 1970s. Her personal life was a testament to her political agenda. Throughout her career, she adopted 13 children from various countries. She called her family “the rainbow tribe” and took her children on the road in an effort to show that racial and cultural harmony could exist.
Jane Goodall
A British primatologist and anthropologist Jane Goodall is considered to be the world's foremost expert on chimpanzees, Goodall is best known for her over 55-year study of social and family interactions of wild chimpanzees since she first went to Gombe Stream National Park, Tanzania in 1960.
Ruth Bader Ginsburg
An Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. Ginsburg was appointed by President Bill Clinton and took the oath of office on August 10, 1993. She is the second female justice to be confirmed to the court, and one of four female justices to be confirmed.
As a judge, Ruth Ginsburg favors caution, moderation and restraint. She is considered part of the Supreme Court's moderate-liberal bloc presenting a strong voice in favor of gender equality, the rights of workers and the separation of church and state.
Frida Kahlo
Frida Kahlo was a Mexican artist who painted many portraits, self-portraits, and works inspired by the nature and artifacts of Mexico. Inspired by the country's popular culture, she employed a naïve folk art style to explore questions of identity, postcolonialism, gender, class, and race in Mexican society.
Queen Elizabeth II
Queen Elizabeth II of Great Britain is the longest-reigning monarch in British history. She celebrated 65 years on the throne in February 2017 with her Sapphire Jubilee. As the longest-serving monarch in British history, she has tried to make her reign more modern and sensitive to a changing public while maintaining traditions associated with the crown.
Queen Elizabeth's long and mainly peaceful reign has been marked by vast changes in her people's lives, in her country's power, how Britain is viewed abroad and how the monarchy is regarded and portrayed. As a constitutional monarch, Elizabeth does not weigh in on political matters, nor does she reveal her political views. However, she confers regularly with her prime ministers.
Princess Diana
Princess Diana was a member of the British royal family. She was the first wife of Charles, Prince of Wales, and the mother of Prince William, Duke of Cambridge, and Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex.
In 1987, Diana was awarded the Honorary Freedom of the City of London, the highest honour which is in the power of the City of London to bestow on someone.
Diana maintained her high public profile and continued many of the activities she had earlier undertaken on behalf of charities, supporting causes as diverse as the arts, children’s issues, and AIDS patients. She also was involved in efforts to ban land mines. To ensure that William and Harry had “an understanding of people’s emotions, their insecurities, people’s distress, and their hopes and dreams,” Diana brought her sons with her to hospitals, homeless shelters, and orphanages. To acquaint them with the world outside royal privilege, she took them to fast food restaurants and on public transportation. Her compassion, personal warmth, humility, and accessibility earned her the sobriquet “the People’s Princess.”
Diana remains one of the most popular members of the royal family throughout history, and she continues to influence the principles of the royal family and its younger generations. She was a major presence on the world stage from her engagement to the Prince of Wales in 1981 until her death in 1997, and was often described as the "world's most photographed woman". She was noted for her compassion, style, charisma, and high-profile charity work, as well as her ill-fated marriage to the Prince of Wales.
The Princess was named to the International Best Dressed List Hall of Fame in 1989. In 2004, People cited her as one of the all-time most beautiful women. In 2012, Time included Diana on its All-TIME 100 Fashion Icons list.
In 1999, Time magazine named Diana one of the 100 Most Important People of the 20th Century. In 2002, Diana ranked third on the BBC's poll of the 100 Greatest Britons. In 2018, Diana ranked fifteenth on the BBC History's poll of 100 Women Who Changed the World.
Audrey Hepburn
Audrey Hepburn was a British actress, model, dancer and humanitarian. Recognised as a film and fashion icon, Hepburn was active during Hollywood's Golden Age. She was ranked by the American Film Institute as the third-greatest female screen legend in Golden Age Hollywood, and was inducted into the International Best Dressed List Hall of Fame.In the 1950s, Hepburn narrated two radio programmes for UNICEF, re-telling children's stories of war. In 1989, Hepburn was appointed a Goodwill Ambassador of UNICEF.United States president George H. W. Bush presented Hepburn with the Presidential Medal of Freedom in recognition of her work with UNICEF, and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences posthumously awarded her the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award for her contribution to humanity.
Sampat Pal Devi
An Indian social activist from the Bundelkhand region of Uttar Pradesh, North India. She is founder of the Gulabi Gang, an Uttar Pradesh-based social organisation, works for women welfare and empowerment.
Dressed in pink saris and wielding bamboo sticks, the Gulabi gang are an all-women vigilante force, and their warrior leader is Devi. The daughter of a shepherd, she taught herself to read and write. When she was 12, she was married to an ice-cream seller and by 20, she had five children. One day in her village in Uttar Pradesh, one of the poorest states in India, she saw a man beating his wife; Devi begged him to stop but he refused. The following day, she returned with a small group of women, all carrying sticks, and beat him like he had beaten his wife. The gulabi, or "pink", gann. Mnig was formed.
Sampat Pal Devi’s Gulabi Gang became extremely popular among women over the passage of time. This gang developed into an organised women’s movement with thousands of women from various districts of Uttar Pradesh working in it. Currently, Sampat Pal Devi has an approximately 270,000 members in her gang for women’s cause. The women members wear of Gulabi Gang carry simple weapons like bamboo sticks with themselves, which they use whenever they face violent resistance.
On 2 March 2014, Sampat Pal Devi was relieved of her role as the head of the Gulabi Gang amidst allegations of financial impropriety and putting her personal interests ahead of those of the gang. But Pal denied the charges and said she will overcome the “conspiracy” against her. She stood on a national level party’s ticket from the Manikpur constituency in Chitrakoot district in the 2012 UP assembly polls – and lost.
Whatever be the charges against her, one thing is sure and that is Sampat Pal Devi is one of the strongest women of modern India. She has changed lives of so many rural women in India. She represents women of India who refuse to bear torture and make their own destiny. Gulabi Gang brought happiness and strength in the lives of thousands of women.
Malala Yousafzai
A Pakistani education advocate who, at the age of 17, became the youngest person to win the Nobel Peace Prize after surviving an assassination attempt by the Taliban. Born on July 12, 1997, Yousafzai became an advocate for girls' education when she herself was still a child, which resulted in the Taliban issuing a death threat against her. On October 9, 2012, a gunman shot Malala when she was traveling home from school. She survived and has continued to speak out on the importance of education. In 2013, she gave a speech to the United Nations and published her first book, I Am Malala. In 2014, she won the Nobel Peace Prize.
Iris Apfel
An American businesswoman, interior designer, and fashion icon. Before finding fame as the world’s oldest style icon, Apfel travelled the world with her husband Carl, buying textiles for their business Old World Weavers, which they ran together until they both retired in 1992. Her exquisite taste also saw her hired as an interior designer for arguably the most famous home in America – the White House – where she worked on redesigns for nine different presidents, from Harold Truman (1945-1953) to Bill Clinton (1993-2001). Through it all, Apfel has made a name for herself as one of style's true eccentrics. Never one to skimp on accessories, Apfel is known for her layered jewels, feather stoles, and, of course, her signature round, black-rimmed glasses.
Björk
Björk is an Icelandic singer-songwriter and actress best known for her solo work covering a wide variety of music styles. Integrating electronic and organic sounds, her music frequently explored the relationship between nature and technology.
Several of Björk's albums have reached the top 20 on the US Billboard 200 chart, the most recent being Vulnicura (2015). Björk has had 31 singles reach the top 40 on pop charts around the world, with 22 top 40 hits in the UK. She is reported to have sold between 20 and 40 million records worldwide as of 2015. She has won the 2010 Polar Music Prize from the Royal Swedish Academy of Music in recognition of her "deeply personal music and lyrics, her precise arrangements and her unique voice." Björk was included in Time's 2015 list of the 100 most influential people in the world. She was ranked both sixtieth and eighty-first in Rolling Stone's 100 greatest singers and songwriters lists respectively. Björk also won five BRIT Awards, and has been nominated for 15 Grammy Awards.
Outside her music career, Björk starred in the 2000 Lars von Trier film Dancer in the Dark, for which she won the Best Actress Award at the 2000 Cannes Film Festival, and was nominated for Academy Award for Best Original Song for "I've Seen It All". Björk has also been an advocate for environmental causes in her home country Iceland.
Joan Of Arc
Joan of Arc nicknamed "The Maid of Orléans", is considered a heroine of France for her role during the Lancastrian phase of the Hundred Years' War, and was canonized as a Roman Catholic saint. At the age 18 she led the French army to victory over the English at Orléans. Captured a year later, Joan was burned at the stake as a heretic by the English and their French collaborators. She was canonized as a Roman Catholic saint more than 500 years later, on May 16, 1920.
Women have looked to Joan as a positive example of a brave and active woman. She operated within a religious tradition that believed an exceptional person from any level of society might receive a divine calling. Some of her most significant aid came from women.
Dolly Parton
Dolly Parton is an American singer, songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, record producer, actress, author, businesswoman, and philanthropist, known primarily for her work in country music. After achieving success as a songwriter for others, Dolly Parton made her album debut in 1967, with her album Hello, I'm Dolly.
Parton is the most honored female country performer of all time. Achieving 25 Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) certified Gold, Platinum, and Multi-Platinum awards, she has had 25 songs reach No. 1 on the Billboard country music charts, a record for a female artist. She has 41 career top-10 country albums, a record for any artist, and she has 110 career charted singles over the past 40 years. She has garnered nine Grammy Awards, two Academy Award nominations, ten Country Music Association Awards, seven Academy of Country Music Awards, three American Music Awards, and is one of only seven female artists to win the Country Music Association's Entertainer of the Year Award. Parton has received 47 Grammy nominations.
Simone Biles
Simone Biles is an American artistic gymnast. Biles is the 2016 Olympic individual all-around, vault and floor gold medalist, and balance-beam bronze medalist. She was part of the gold-medal-winning team dubbed the "Final Five" at the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro.
Biles is a four-time world all-around champion (2013–15, 2018), three-time world floor exercise champion (2013–15), two-time world balance beam champion (2014, 2015), five-time United States national all-around champion (2013–16, 2018), and a member of the gold-medal-winning American teams at the 2014, 2015, and 2018 World Artistic Gymnastics Championships. Additionally, she is a four-time world medalist on vault (silver in 2013 and 2014, bronze in 2015, gold in 2018), the 2018 World silver medalist on bars, and the 2013 World bronze medalist on balance beam.
Having won a combined total of twenty-three Olympic and World Championship medals, Biles is the most decorated American gymnast. With her win in Rio, Biles became the sixth woman to win an individual all-around title at both the World Championships and the Olympic Games. Biles set an American record for most gold medals in women's gymnastics at a single Olympic Games. Many of her peers as well as the media refer to her as the greatest gymnast ever.
OMG I read her autobiography (which is great and you should all go read it) and she is literally my favorite person like ever now!
Missy Elliot
Melissa Arnette "Missy"/"Misdemeanor" Elliott is a five-time Grammy Award-winning rapper, singer, songwriter, dancer and record producer. Elliott embarked on her music career with all-female R&B group Sista in the early-mid 1990s and later became a member of the Swing Mob collective along with childhood friend and longtime collaborator Timbaland, with whom she worked on projects for Aaliyah, 702, Total, and SWV. Following several collaborations and guest appearances, she launched her solo career in 1997 with her debut album Supa Dupa Fly, which spawned the top 20 single "Sock It 2 Me". The album debuted at number three on the Billboard 200, the highest-charting debut for a female rapper at the time.
Elliott is a positive role model who projects strength, confidence and female empowerment — but has never sacrificed her sense of fun or her capacity to entertain. And after more than two decades in hip hop, she is still at the top of the game.
The music industry had never seen anyone quite like Missy Elliott. She was hailed by The New Yorker as the "biggest and blackest female rap star that Middle America has ever seen," who had "avoided the prevailing stereotypes of the music-video industry." Meaning she did not pander to the male gaze as many female artists did — or felt compelled to do — during the height of the MTV era. She projected confidence through her personal style instead, donning an inflatable body suit and outsized shades in the video for "The Rain," and a red-and-white space suit for "Sock It to Me." Her message has always been that women "are equal to men, as important as men and as powerful" noted the fashion magazine Dazed retrospectively, in 2016.
Maya Angelou
An American poet, singer, memoirist, and civil rights activist. She published seven autobiographies, three books of essays, several books of poetry, and is credited with a list of plays, movies, and television shows spanning over 50 years. She received dozens of awards and more than 50 honorary degrees. Angelou is best known for her series of seven autobiographies, which focus on her childhood and early adult experiences. The first, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1969), tells of her life up to the age of 17 and brought her international recognition and acclaim.
She became a poet and writer after a series of occupations as a young adult, including fry cook, sex worker, nightclub dancer and performer, cast member of the opera Porgy and Bess, coordinator for the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, and journalist in Egypt and Ghana during the decolonization of Africa. She was an actress, writer, director, and producer of plays, movies, and public television programs. In 1982, she was named the first Reynolds Professor of American Studies at Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. She was active in the Civil Rights Movement and worked with Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X.
She served on two presidential committees, for Gerald Ford in 1975 and for Jimmy Carter in 1977. In 2000, Angelou was awarded the National Medal of Arts by President Bill Clinton. In 2010, she was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian honor in the U.S., by President Barack Obama.
Beginning in the 1990s, she made around 80 appearances a year on the lecture circuit, something she continued into her eighties. In 1993, Angelou recited her poem "On the Pulse of Morning" (1993) at the first inauguration of Bill Clinton, making her the first poet to make an inaugural recitation since Robert Frost at the inauguration of John F. Kennedy in 1961. The recording of the poem won a Grammy Award.
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez
“What I want to tell children across this country is that no matter what the president says, this country belongs to you. And it belongs to everyone,” ~Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is an American Democratic Socialist who made headlines in 2018 by beating a 10-term New York Democrat incumbent in a congressional primary, before becoming the youngest woman ever elected to Congress.
On June 26, 2018, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez made history when she thoroughly defeated 10-term Congressman Joe Crowley, the fourth most powerful Democrat in the House, in New York's 14th congressional district in the state's Democratic primary. On November 6, less than a month after her 29th birthday, she emerged victorious in the general election to become the youngest woman ever elected to Congress. It was her first time running for office, and as a Democratic Socialist of Puerto Rican descent, her stunning triumph was a boon to the progressive hopes of her liberal supporters.
As an active member of the Democratic Socialists of America who also helped organize for Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders in 2016, Ocasio-Cortez ran on a progressive platform — abolishing ICE, criminal justice reform, tuition-free college and universal healthcare.
Ocasio-Cortez was sworn in as a congresswoman on January 3. She's promising to push an ambitious set of policy priorities, including the Green New Deal — a sweeping set of public investments in renewable energy and jobs.
P!nk
P!nk (Alecia Beth Moore) is an American singer, songwriter, and actress.
Recognized for her distinctive, raspy voice and acrobatic stage presence, Pink has sold over 90 million records worldwide, making her one of the world's best-selling music artists. Her career accolades include three Grammy Awards, two Brit Awards, a Daytime Emmy Award and seven MTV Video Music Awards, including the Michael Jackson Video Vanguard Award. In 2009, Billboard named Pink the Pop Songs Artist of the Decade. Pink was also the second most-played female solo artist in the United Kingdom, during the 2000s decade, behind Madonna. VH1 ranked her number 10 on their list of the 100 Greatest Women in Music, while Billboard awarded her the Woman of the Year award in 2013. At the 63rd annual BMI Pop Awards, she received the BMI President's Award for "her outstanding achievement in songwriting and global impact on pop culture and the entertainment industry."
Pink has been credited for breaking boundaries and pushing the envelope throughout her career. She is regarded as the "most trailblazing artist" of her pop generation. Pink is an animal-rights activist and a prominent campaigner for PETA, contributing her voice toward causes such as the protest against KFC. Pink is also outspoken about LGBT rights and supports same-sex marriage and is involved with several charities, including Human Rights Campaign, ONE Campaign, Prince's Trust, New York Restoration Project, Run for the Cure Foundation, Save the Children, Take Back the Night, UNICEF and World Animal Protection.
In 2018, she appeared on Forbes' list of "Highest Paid Female Celebrities", with the earnings of $52 million.
Megan Rapinoe
Megan Rapinoe is an American professional soccer player who plays for and captains Reign FC in the National Women's Soccer League, as a midfielder and winger. As a member of the United States women's national soccer team, she helped the U.S. win the 2015 and 2019 FIFA Women's World Cup as well as gold at the 2012 London Olympics, and finish runners-up at the 2011 FIFA Women's World Cup. Since 2018, she co-captains her national team alongside Carli Lloyd and Alex Morgan.
During the 2012 London Olympics, she scored three goals and tallied a team-high four assists to lead the United States to a gold medal. She is the first player, male or female, to score a goal directly from a corner at the Olympic Games.
Rapinoe is an advocate for numerous LGBT organizations, including the Gay, Lesbian & Straight Education Network (GLSEN) and Athlete Ally. In 2013, she was awarded the board of directors Award by the Los Angeles Gay and Lesbian Center.
She received the Harry Glickman Professional Female Athlete of the Year award at the 60th annual Oregon Sports Awards held on February 12, 2012. On October 25, 2012, she was one of ten female soccer players shortlisted for the FIFA World Player of the Year award. The same year, she was named a finalist for Sports Illustrated's Most Inspiring Performers of 2012. Rapinoe was awarded the board of directors Award by the Los Angeles Gay and Lesbian Center on November 10, 2012, for bringing awareness to LGBT people in sports.
Yayoi Kusama
A Japanese contemporary artist who works primarily in sculpture and installation, but is also active in painting, performance, film, fashion, poetry, fiction, and other arts. Her work is based in conceptual art and shows some attributes of feminism, minimalism, surrealism, Art Brut, pop art, and abstract expressionism, and is infused with autobiographical, psychological, and sexual content. She has been acknowledged as one of the most important living artists to come out of Japan.
Sally Ride
Sally Ride joined NASA in 1978 and became the first American woman in space in 1983. Ride was the third woman in space overall, after USSR cosmonauts Valentina Tereshkova (1963) and Svetlana Savitskaya (1982). Ride remains the youngest American astronaut to have traveled to space, having done so at the age of 32.
Alicia Keys
An American singer-songwriter, musician and record producer. A classically-trained pianist, Keys was composing songs by age 12 and was signed at 15 years old by Columbia Records. After disputes with the label, she signed with Arista Records, and later released her debut album, Songs in A Minor, with J Records in 2001. Keys became the first female to have an MTV Unplugged album debut at number one.
Keys has received numerous accolades throughout her career, including 15 competitive Grammy Awards, 17 NAACP Image Awards, 12 ASCAP Awards, and an award from the Songwriters Hall of Fame and National Music Publishers Association. She has sold over 65 million records worldwide. Considered a musical icon, Keys was named by Billboard the top R&B artist of the 2000s decade and placed number 10 on their list of Top 50 R&B/Hip-Hop Artists of the Past 25 Years. VH1 also included her on their 100 Greatest Artists of All Time and 100 Greatest Women in Music lists, while Time have named her in their 100 list of most influential people in 2005 and 2017. Keys is also acclaimed for her humanitarian work, philanthropy and activism. She is the co-founder and Global Ambassador of Keep a Child Alive, a non-profit organization that provides medicine, orphan care, and social support to families with HIV and AIDS in Africa and India.
Keys protested during the Women's March on Washington. She was one of the key speakers, and she said that "we want the best for all Americans. No hate, no bigotry, no Muslim registry. We value education, health care, equality." She added that she cares about women's equal pay, war, women's rights, and environmental protection.
Keys is listed on the Recording Industry Association of America's best-selling artists in the United States, selling over 17.8 million albums and 21.9 million digital songs. She has sold over 30 million albums worldwide. Billboard ranked Keys as the fifth-most successful artist of the 2000s decade,top R&B artist of the 2000s decade, and placed her at number 10 in their list of Top 50 R&B/Hip-Hop Artists of the Past 25 Years.
Dr. Wangari Maathai
A Kenyan environmental political activist and Nobel laureate. In 1971, Wangari Maathai received a Ph.D., effectively becoming the first woman in either East or Central Africa to earn a doctorate. In 1977, Maathai founded the Green Belt Movement, an environmental non-governmental organization focused on the planting of trees, environmental conservation, and women's rights. In 1984, she was awarded the Right Livelihood Award, and in 2004, she became the first African woman to receive the Nobel Peace Prize for "her contribution to sustainable development, democracy and peace." She was elected to Kenya's National Assembly in 2002 and has written several books and scholarly articles. She won the Nobel Peace Prize for her "holistic approach to sustainable development that embraces democracy, human rights, and women's rights in particular.
Lindsey Vonn
An American former World Cup alpine ski racer on the US Ski Team. She has won four World Cup overall championships—one of only two female skiers to do so with three consecutive titles in 2008, 2009, and 2010, plus another in 2012. Vonn won the gold medal in downhill at the 2010 Winter Olympics, the first one for an American woman. She has also won a record 8 World Cup season titles in the downhill discipline (2008–2013, 2015, 2016), 5 titles in super-G (2009–2012, 2015), and 3 consecutive titles in the combined (2010–2012). In 2016, she won her 20th World Cup crystal globe title, the overall record for men or women, surpassing Ingemar Stenmark of Sweden, who won 19 globes from 1975 to 1984. She has the second highest super ranking of all skiers, men or women.
Vonn is one of 6 women to have won World Cup races in all five disciplines of alpine skiing—downhill, super-G, giant slalom, slalom and super combined—and has won 82 World Cup races in her career through February 3, 2018. Her total of 82 World Cup victories is a women's record, surpassing Annemarie Moser-Pröll of Austria who had held the record since the 1970s. Only Ingemar Stenmark of Sweden with 86 World Cup victories has more. With her Olympic gold and bronze medals, 2 World Championship gold medals in 2009 (plus three silver medals in 2007 and 2011), and 4 overall World Cup titles, Vonn is the most successful American ski racer and considered one of the greatest of all skiers.
"One last time I will stand in the starting gate. One last time I will feel the adrenaline running through my veins. One last time I will risk it all. One last time...I will remember it forever. Let's do this!"
Celia Cruz
A Cuban singer and the most popular Latin artist of the 20th century, gaining twenty-three gold albums during her career. She received a star on the "Walk of Fame" in Hollywood. U.S. President Bill Clinton awarded her the National Medal of Arts in 1994. She was renowned internationally as the "Queen of Salsa", "La Guarachera de Cuba", as well as "The Queen of Latin Music." Celia Cruz spent much of her career working in the United States and several Latin American countries. Leila Cobo of Billboard magazine once said: "Cruz is indisputably the best known and most influential female figure in the history of Cuban and Latin music." She was an ambassador for the variety and vitality of the music of her native Havana, and after the Cuban revolution, she became a symbol of artistic freedom for Cuban American exiles.
Through a formidable work ethic, Cruz rose to the very top in her genre; a genre that was traditionally male-dominated. In February 2004, for her last album, Regalo del Alma, she won a posthumous award at the Premios Lo Nuestro for best salsa release of the year. It was announced in December 2005 that a musical called Azucar! would open in Tenerife before touring the world. The name comes from Cruz's well-known catchphrase of "¡Azúcar!" (“Sugar!”)
Jaqueline Kennedy Onassis
Jaqueline Kennedy Onassis was the wife of the 35th President of the United States, John F. Kennedy, and the First Lady of the United States from 1961 until his assassination in 1963. Jacqueline Kennedy remains one of the most popular First Ladies. She was featured 27 times on the annual Gallup list of the top 10 most admired people of the second half of the 20th century; In 2011, she was ranked in fifth place in a list of the five most influential First Ladies of the twentieth century for her "profound effect on American society. In 2015, she was included in a list of the top ten influential U.S. First Ladies due to the admiration for her based around "her fashion sense and later after her husband's assassination, for her poise and dignity.
Cleopatra
Cleopatra VII ruled ancient Egypt as co-regent (first with her two younger brothers and then with her son) for almost three decades. She became the last in a dynasty of Macedonian rulers founded by Ptolemy, who served as general under Alexander the Great during his conquest of Egypt in 332 B.C. Well-educated and clever, Cleopatra could speak various languages and served as the dominant ruler in all three of her co-regencies. Her romantic liaisons and military alliances with the Roman leaders Julius Caesar and Mark Antony, as well as her supposed exotic beauty and powers of seduction, earned her an enduring place in history and popular myth.
Her story resonates because of what she represented in such a male-dominated society; in an era when Egypt was roiled by internal and external battles, Cleopatra held the country together and proved to be as powerful a leader as any of her male counterparts.
Ilhan Omar
“I am where I belong, at the people’s house and you’re just gonna have to deal!”~Ilhan Omar.
Ilhan Omar:She not only became the first Muslim woman elected to represent Minnesota in Congress, but is also the first refugee and immigrant ever elected, one of two Muslim women ever elected to Congress, and also the first women to wear a hijab. Omar is also the first Somali-Amercian congresswoman.
Billie Jean King
An American former World No. 1 professional tennis player. King won 39 Grand Slam titles: 12 in singles, 16 in women's doubles, and 11 in mixed doubles. King won the singles title at the inaugural WTA Tour Championships
She became the top-ranked women's tennis player by 1967. In 1973, she formed the Women's Tennis Association and famously defeated Bobby Riggs in the "Battle of the Sexes." The first prominent female athlete to admit her homosexuality, King continued her work as an influential social activist after retiring from tennis.
Regarded by many in the sport as one of the greatest tennis players of all time, King was inducted into the International Tennis Hall of Fame in 1987. The Fed Cup Award of Excellence was bestowed on King in 2010.
Grace Hopper
United States Navy Admiral Grace Hopper (1906–1992) was one of the first programmers in the history of computers. Her belief that programming languages should be as easily understood as English was highly influential on the development of one of the first programming languages called COBOL. It is largely due to Grace Hopper’s influence that programmers use “if/thens” instead of 1s and 0s today.
In the course of her lifetime, Grace Hopper was awarded 40 honorary degrees from universities around the world, along with numerous awards and honors including: • First winner of “Computer Science Man of the Year” award from the Data Processing Management Association in 1969 • First person from the United States and the first woman from any country to be made Distinguished Fellow of the British Computer Society in 1973 • First woman to receive the National Medal of Technology as an individual in 1991.
Nicknamed “Amazing Grace,” she serves as a role model and inspiration to women working in a variety of STEM fields today. Without Grace Hopper’s work and the influence of her ideas on the development of computer programming, the field of computer science would look very different today.
J.k. Rowling
A British novelist, philanthropist, film producer, television producer and screenwriter, best known for writing the Harry Potter fantasy series. The books have won multiple awards, and sold more than 500 million copies, becoming the best-selling book series in history.In 1995, Rowling finished her manuscript for Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone on an old manual typewriter. The book was submitted to twelve publishing houses, all of which rejected the manuscript. A year later she was finally given the green light (and a £1,500 advance) by editor Barry Cunningham from Bloomsbury, a publishing house in London in 2004, Forbes named Rowling as the first person to become a US-dollar billionaire by writing books, the second-richest female entertainer and the 1,062nd richest person in the world. Rowling disputed the calculations and said she had plenty of money, but was not a billionaire. The 2016 Sunday Times Rich List estimated Rowling's fortune at £600 million, ranking her as the joint 197th richest person in the UK. In 2012, Forbes removed Rowling from their rich list, claiming that her US$160 million in charitable donations and the high tax rate in the UK meant she was no longer a billionaire. In February 2013 she was assessed as the 13th most powerful woman in the United Kingdom by Woman's Hour on BBC Radio 4. She was named the most highly paid author in the world with earnings of £72 million ($95 million) a year by Forbes in 2017. In 2000, Rowling established the Volant Charitable Trust, which uses its annual budget of £5.1 million to combat poverty and social inequality. The fund also gives to organisations that aid children, one-parent families, and multiple sclerosis research.
Dian Fossey
An American primatologist and conservationist known for undertaking an extensive study of mountain gorilla groups from 1966 until her death in 1985. She studied them daily in the mountain forests of Rwanda.
Fossey made discoveries about gorillas including how females transfer from group to group over the decades, gorilla vocalization, hierarchies and social relationships among groups, rare infanticide, gorilla diet, and how gorillas recycle nutrients.
By 1980, Fossey was recognized as the world's leading authority on the physiology and behavior of mountain gorillas, defining gorillas as being "dignified, highly social, gentle giants, with individual personalities, and strong family relationships.
During her time in Rwanda, she actively supported conservation efforts, strongly opposed poaching and tourism in wildlife habitats, and made more people acknowledge sapient gorillas. Fossey was brutally murdered in her cabin at a remote camp in Rwanda in December 1985. It has been theorized that her murder was linked to her conservation efforts.
Cher
An American singer and actress. Commonly referred to by the media as the Goddess of Pop, she has been described as embodying female autonomy in a male-dominated industry. She is known for her distinctive contralto singing voice and for having worked in numerous areas of entertainment, as well as adopting a variety of styles and appearances during her six-decade-long career.
Cher gained popularity in 1965 as one-half of the folk rock husband-wife duo Sonny & Cher after their song "I Got You Babe" reached number one on the American and British charts. By the end of 1967, they had sold 40 million records worldwide and had become, according to Time magazine, rock's "it" couple. She began her solo career simultaneously, releasing in 1966 her first million-seller song, "Bang Bang (My Baby Shot Me Down)". She emerged as a fashion trendsetter by wearing elaborate outfits on her television shows.
Cher reached a new commercial peak in 1998 with the dance-pop album Believe, whose title track became the biggest-selling single of all time by a female artist in the UK. It features the pioneering use of Auto-Tune, also known as the "Cher effect". Her 2002–2005 Living Proof: The Farewell Tour became one of the highest-grossing concert tours of all time, earning $250 million. In 2008, she signed a $180 million deal to headline the Colosseum at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas for three years.
Cher has won a Grammy Award, an Emmy Award, an Academy Award, three Golden Globe Awards, a Cannes Film Festival Award, and an award from the Kennedy Center Honors and the Council of Fashion Designers of America, among several other honors. She has sold 100 million records worldwide to date, becoming one of the best-selling music artists in history. She is the only artist to date to have a number-one single on a Billboard chart in six consecutive decades, from the 1960s to the 2010s. Outside of her music and acting, she is noted for her political views, philanthropic endeavors, and social activism, including LGBT rights and HIV/AIDS prevention.
Ellen DeGeneres
An American comedian, television host, actress, writer, producer, and LGBT activist.
Ellen has used fame as a platform to encourage human compassion and support the worthy causes of many charities, organizations and individuals on her famous talk show. Ellen supports people and families who are facing difficult times or those she feels need to be recognized for their good deeds and hard work for their communities.
Over the show’s 13 year history, Ellen has donated an astounding $50m to various charities and individuals in need.
Ellen is a strong supporter of a wide scope of charities concerned with disadvantaged youths, depression and suicide, animal protection, cancer and AIDs, refugees and human trafficking. Also, as an openly gay woman, Ellen is an inspiring icon for many and steadfast supporter of many LGBT movements. She has broken records with the awards she has won, including 20 Peoples Choice Awards, and plenty more!
Michelle Obama
The wife of former U.S. President Barack Obama. Prior to her role as first lady, she was a lawyer, Chicago city administrator and community-outreach worker. As first lady of the United States, Michelle Obama focused her attention on issues such as the support of military families, helping working women balance career and family and encouraging national service. During the first year of the Obama presidency, Michelle and her husband volunteered at homeless shelters and soup kitchens in the Washington, D.C. area. Michelle also made appearances at public schools, stressing the importance of education and volunteer work.
Ever conscious of her family's diet and health, Michelle supported the organic-food movement, instructing the White House kitchens to prepare organic food for guests and her family. In March 2009, Michelle worked with 23 fifth graders from a local school in Washington D.C. to plant an 1,100-square-foot garden of fresh vegetables and install beehives on the South Lawn of the White House. She also put efforts to fight childhood obesity near the top of her agenda. In 2012, she announced a new fitness program for kids as part of her Let's Move initiative. Along with the U.S. Olympic team and other sports organizations, she worked to get young people to try out a new sport or activity.
In 2015, Mrs. Obama joined President Obama to launch Let Girls Learn, a U.S. government-wide initiative to help girls around the world go to school and stay in school. As part of this effort, Mrs. Obama called on countries across the globe to help educate and empower young women, and she shared the stories and struggles of these young women with young people here at home to inspire them to commit to their own education.
Mother Teresa
Nun and missionary Mother Teresa, known in the Catholic church as Saint Teresa of Calcutta, devoted her life to caring for the sick and poor. Born in Macedonia to parents of Albanian-descent and having taught in India for 17 years, Mother Teresa experienced her "call within a call" in 1946. Her order established a hospice; centers for the blind, aged and disabled; and a leper colony. In 1979 she received the Nobel Peace Prize for her humanitarian work.
Betty White
Betty White is an American actress and comedian, with the longest television career of any female or male entertainer. Regarded as a pioneer of television, she was one of the first women to have control both in front of and behind the camera and is recognized as the first woman to produce a sitcom (Life with Elizabeth), which contributed to her receiving the honorary title Mayor of Hollywood in 1955.
White is a pet enthusiast and an animal health advocate who works with animal organizations, including the Los Angeles Zoo Commission, the Morris Animal Foundation, African Wildlife.
White has won five Primetime Emmy Awards, two Daytime Emmy Awards (including the 2015 Daytime Emmy for Lifetime Achievement), and received a Regional (LA) Emmy in 1952. White is the only woman to have received an Emmy in all performing comedic categories, and also holds the record for longest span between Emmy nominations for performances—her first was in 1951 and her most recent was in 2011, a span of 60 years. She has also won three American Comedy Awards (including a Lifetime Achievement Award in 1990), and two Viewers for Quality Television Awards. She was inducted into the Television Hall of Fame in 1995 and has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6747 Hollywood Boulevard alongside the star of her late husband Allen Ludden.
Hedy Lamar
An Austrian-born American film actress and inventor.
Often referred to as one of the most gorgeous and exotic of Hollywood's leading ladies, Lamarr made a number of well-received films during the 1930s and 1940s.
In 1942, during the heyday of her career, Lamarr earned recognition in a field quite different from entertainment. She and her friend, the composer George Antheil, received a patent for an idea of a radio signaling device, or "Secret Communications System," which was a means of changing radio frequencies to keep enemies from decoding messages. Originally designed to defeat the German Nazis, the system became an important step in the development of technology to maintain the security of both military communications and cellular phones.
Lamarr wasn't instantly recognized for her communications invention since its wide ranging impact wasn't understood until decades later. However, in 1997 Lamarr and Antheil were honored with the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) Pioneer Award, and that same year Lamarr became the first female to receive the BULBIE™ Gnass Spirit of Achievement Award, considered the "Oscars" of inventing.
Oprah Winfrey
Oprah Winfrey is an American media executive, actress, talk show host, television producer and philanthropist. She is best known for her talk show The Oprah Winfrey Show, which was the highest-rated television program of its kind in history and was nationally syndicated from 1986 to 2011 in Chicago. Dubbed the "Queen of All Media", she was the richest African American of the 20th century and North America's first black multi-billionaire, and has been ranked the greatest black philanthropist in American history. She has also been sometimes ranked as the most influential woman in the world.
According to Forbes magazine, Oprah was the richest African American of the 20th century and the world's only Black billionaire for three years running. Life magazine hailed her as the most influential woman of her generation. In 2005, Business Week named her the greatest Black philanthropist in American history. Oprah's Angel Network has raised more than $50 million for charitable programs, including girls' education in South Africa and relief to the victims of Hurricane Katrina. She has donated $425 million throughout her career, including over $100 million to the Oprah Winfrey Leadership Academy for Girls in South Africa.
In January 2018, Winfrey became the first African-American woman to be honored with the Golden Globes' Cecil B. DeMille Award, for lifetime achievement.
Mary Lou Retton
Mary Lou Retton is a retired American gymnast. At the 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles, she won a gold medal in the individual all-around competition, as well as two silver medals and two bronze medals. Her performance made her one of the most popular athletes in the United States.
Retton was the first ever American woman to win the all-around gold medal at the Olympics and was the only one to do so for twenty years. She is credited with being a pioneering figure in American women's gymnastics
Alison Bechdel
Alison Bechdel is an American cartoonist. Originally best known for the long-running comic strip Dykes to Watch Out For, which was first published in WomaNews, a feminist newspaper. The strip ran from 1983 to 2008 and was syndicated in more than 50 alternative papers around the country; it has also been collected into books. She came to critical and commercial success in 2006 with her graphic memoir Fun Home, which was subsequently adapted as a musical and won a Tony Award for Best Musical in 2015. In 2012, she released her second graphic memoir Are You My Mother?
Then in 2014, the author received the MacArthur Fellows “Genius” Award. She has also greatly influenced analysis of the cinematic world, with the Bechdel Test, coined from her comic strip, utilized to measure the presence of female characters in film.
The Bechdel test moved into mainstream criticism in the 2010s and has been described as "the standard by which feminist critics judge television, movies, books, and other media". In 2013, an Internet newspaper described it as "almost a household phrase, common shorthand to capture whether a film is woman-friendly".
Theresa Kachindamoto
Theresa Kachindamoto: the paramount chief, or Inkosi, of the Dedza District in the central region of Malawi. She has informal authority over more than 900,000 people. She is known for her forceful action in dissolving child marriages and insisting on education for both girls and boys.
Chief Kachindamoto is known for her fierce leadership in annulling over 1,500 child marriages and sending girls back to school in Dedza district, in the central region of Malawi.
When Theresa assumed office as chief in 2003, she was disturbed to find that there were high rates of child-marriages in her district. This encouraged her to begin her campaign. Her efforts came with a lot of resistance from the community, from parents and even from the child couples themselves. The key challenge in ending child-marriages in Malawi is the acceptance of the practice as a norm as well as poverty. Girls are often married off to improve a family’s financial standing or at times to repay a debt. Taking that into consideration, Kachindamoto knew that she would have a tough time trying to convince the community to stop the practice and change their mindset. Instead, she changed the law. Theresa got her 50 sub-chiefs to sign an agreement to abolish early marriage under customary-law and annul any existing unions in her area of authority.
When asked about what inspires her to keep working on this issue, Chief Kachindamoto said, “When girls are educated, everything is possible."
Katie Bouman
“I’d like to encourage all of you to go out and help push the boundaries of science, even if it may at first seem as mysterious to you as a black hole.”
Katie Bouman is an American imaging scientist and Assistant Professor of Computer Science at the California Institute of Technology. She researches computational methods for imaging, and developed an algorithm that made possible the first picture visualization of a black hole using the Event Horizon Telescope. She was part of the team of over 200 people who implemented the project and was the first person to see a visualization of a black hole.
Bouman developed an algorithm known as Continuous High-resolution Image Reconstruction using Patch priors, or CHIRP. This algorithm was one of the algorithms used to image the supermassive black hole inside the core of the galaxy Messier 87, the other being CLEAN which was introduced by Jan Högbom.
Bouman was responsible at MIT for an algorithm used in creating the first images of a black hole, published in April 2019, providing computational support to learn about general relativity in the strong-field regime. The machine learning algorithm fills in gaps in data produced by telescopes from around the world. Bouman led efforts in "the verification of images and selection of imaging parameters" for the Event Horizon Telescope.
The funny thing is, black holes don't let off light. So before you downvote my comment, explain to me how she got a picture of that "black hole". But that baby is adorable!
Judy Garland
An American actress, singer, dancer, and vaudevillian. During a career that spanned 45 years, she attained international stardom as an actress in both musical and dramatic roles, as a recording artist, and on the concert stage. Respected for her versatility, she received a juvenile Academy Award, a Golden Globe Award, and a Special Tony Award. Garland was the first woman to win the Grammy Award for Album of the Year for her live recording Judy at Carnegie Hall .
By the time of her death in 1969, Garland had appeared in more than 35 films. She has been called one of the greats of entertainment, and her reputation has endured. In 1992, Gerald Clarke of Architectural Digest dubbed Garland "probably the greatest American entertainer of the twentieth century". O'Brien believes that "No one in the history of Hollywood ever packed the musical wallop that Garland did", explaining, "She had the biggest, most versatile voice in movies. Her Technicolor musicals... defined the genre. The songs she introduced were Oscar gold. Her film career frames the Golden Age of Hollywood musicals." Turner Classic Movies dubbed Garland "history's most poignant voice". Entertainment Weekly's Gene Lyons dubbed Garland "the Madonna of her generation". The American Film Institute named her eighth among the Greatest female stars of Golden Age Hollywood cinema.
Garland was posthumously awarded the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 1997. Several of her recordings have been inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame. These include "Over the Rainbow", which was ranked as the number one movie song of all time in the American Film Institute's "100 Years...100 Songs" list.
This Dorothy is good as the gold at the end of the rainbow (nah, better)!
Aretha Franklin
Aretha Franklin just became the first woman ever awarded a Pulitzer Prize Special Award for her “incredible contribution to American music and culture for more than five decades.” With 18 Grammy wins, this award re-confirms the impact that her music continues to have on the world!
Ruth Bader Ginsburg
“My mother told me to be a lady. And for her, that meant be your own person, be independent,” Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
Lady Gaga
Lady Gaga is an American singer, songwriter, and actress. She is known for her unconventionality and provocative work, as well as visual experimentation.
Having sold 27 million albums and 146 million singles as of January 2016, Gaga is one of the best-selling music artists in history. Her achievements include several Guinness World Records, six Grammys, three Brit Awards, and an award from the Songwriters Hall of Fame and the Council of Fashion Designers of America. Gaga has been declared Billboard's Artist of the Year and included among Forbes's power and earnings rankings.
Gaga has been often regarded as a trailblazer for sometimes utilizing controversy to bring attention to various issues. Time placed Gaga on their All-Time 100 Fashion Icons List, stating: "Lady Gaga is just as notorious for her outrageous style as she is for her pop hits.
She is known for her philanthropy and social activism, including LGBT rights, and for her non-profit organization, the Born This Way Foundation, which focuses on promoting youth empowerment and combating bullying.
Temple Grandin
An American professor of animal science at Colorado State University, consultant to the livestock industry on animal behavior, and autism spokesperson. She is one of the first individuals on the autism spectrum to publicly share insights from her personal experience of autism. She invented the "hug box" device to calm those on the autism spectrum. In the 2010 Time 100, an annual list of the 100 most influential people in the world, she was named in the "Heroes" category.
She has lectured widely about her first-hand experiences of the anxiety of feeling threatened by everything in her surroundings, and of being dismissed and feared, which motivates her work in humane livestock handling processes. She studied the behavior of cattle, how they react to ranchers, movements, objects, and light. Grandin then designed adapted curved corrals, intended to reduce stress, panic and injury in animals being led to slaughter. While her designs are widely used throughout the slaughterhouse industry, her claim of compassion for the animals is that because of her autism she can see the animals' reality from their viewpoint, that when she holds an animal's head in her hands as it is being slaughtered, she feels a deep, godlike connection to them.
Based on personal experience, Grandin advocates early intervention to address autism and supportive teachers, who can direct fixations of the child with autism in fruitful directions. She has described her hypersensitivity to noise and other sensory stimuli. She says words are her second language and that she thinks "totally in pictures," using her vast visual memory to translate information into a slideshow of mental images that can be manipulated or correlated.
Benazir Bhutto
A Pakistani politician who became the first woman leader of a Muslim nation in modern history. She served two terms as prime minister of Pakistan.
She was elected co-chairwoman of the Pakistan People’s Party, along with her mother, and when free elections were finally held in 1988, she herself became Prime Minister. At 35, she was one of the youngest chief executives in the world, and the first woman to serve as prime minister in an Islamic country.
Only two years into her first term, President Ghulam Ishaq Khan dismissed Bhutto from office. She initiated an anti-corruption campaign, and in 1993 was re-elected as Prime Minister. While in office, she brought electricity to the countryside and built schools all over the country. She made hunger, housing and healthcare her top priorities, and looked forward to continuing to modernize Pakistan.
In 1996, President Leghari of Pakistan dismissed Benazir Bhutto from office, alleging mismanagement, and dissolved the National Assembly. Bhutto’s husband was imprisoned, and once again, she was forced to leave her homeland. For nine years, she and her children lived in exile in London, where she continued to advocate the restoration of democracy in Pakistan. In 2007 Benazir Bhutto and her husband returned to their native country.
Although she was greeted by enthusiastic crowds, within hours of her arrival, her motorcade was attacked by a suicide bomber. She survived this first assassination attempt, although more than 100 bystanders died in the attack. With national elections scheduled for January 2008, her Pakistan People’s Party was poised for a victory that would make Bhutto Prime Minister once again. After a campaign rally in Rawalpindi, a gunman fired at her car before detonating a bomb, killing himself and more than 20 bystanders. Bhutto was rushed to the hospital but soon succumbed to injuries suffered in the attack.
Benazir Bhutto left a deeply polarizing legacy. Her career has been celebrated as a triumph for women in the Muslim world and for the global fight against Islamic extremism.
Madonna
Since the beginning of her career in the early 1980s, American singer and songwriter Madonna has had a social-cultural impact on the world through her recordings, attitude, clothing and lifestyle. Called the "Queen of Pop", Madonna is labeled by international authors as the greatest woman in music, as well as the most influential and iconic female recording artist of all time. Madonna is the first multimedia pop icon in history and professionals agree that she has become the world's biggest and most socially significant pop icon, as well as the most controversial.
Every time her thighs show they kill me with the cute little chubbiness.
Carmen Amaya
Carmen Amaya was a Spanish Romani flamenco dancer and singer. She has been called "the greatest Spanish Romani dancer of her generation" and "the most extraordinary personality of all time in flamenco dance." She was the first female flamenco dancer to master footwork previously reserved for the best male dancers, due to its speed and intensity. She sometimes danced in high-waisted trousers as a symbol of her strong character.
Born, in abject poverty, Carmen Amaya started to dance at the age of four on the streets of her native Barcelona, accompanied by her father playing the guitar. By the time she was 23 she had become a star of Spanish cinema and soon after, the darling of Hollywood and Broadway.
The fire, grit, electricity, passion and “duende” (soul) of the Gypsy style which we associate with Flamenco is largely due to the contribution of Carmen Amaya. But, Amaya was also a pioneer. Before her, women did very little footwork. She changed the role of women from one of passive posture to masculine ferocity and virtuosity. She wore pants like a man and surpassed the men in the speed, complexity and attack of her footwork. Yet Amaya also embodied sensuality and expressiveness.
Even today she remains unequaled. She was a genius whose talent was matched, according to all accounts, by her generosity and goodness. Nobody before or after has managed to transmit such strong, almost electrical energy, such “duende”.
She will be forever identified with the passion of Spanish dance.
Gloria Steinem
A Jewish American feminist, journalist, and social political activist who became nationally recognized as a leader and a spokeswoman for the American feminist movement in the late 1960s and early 1970s.
After graduating from Smith College in 1956, Steinem went to India on a scholarship. There she participated in nonviolent protests against government policy. In 1960 she began working as a writer and journalist in New York City. Steinem gained attention in 1963 with her article “I Was a Playboy Bunny,” which recounted her experience as a scantily clad waitress at Hugh Hefner’s Playboy Club. By 1968 Steinem’s work had become more overtly political. She began writing a column, “The City Politic,” for New York magazine. Her involvement in feminism intensified in 1968 when she attended a meeting of a radical feminist group, the Redstockings. Proud of her feminist roots—her paternal grandmother had served as president of the Ohio Women’s Suffrage Association from 1908 to 1911—Steinem founded the National Women’s Political Caucus in July 1971 with Betty Friedan, Bella Abzug, and Shirley Chisholm. That same year she began exploring the possibility of a new magazine for women, one that treated contemporary issues from a feminist perspective. The result was Ms. magazine, which first appeared as an insert in the December 1971 issue of New York. The following year the first stand-alone issue was published.
She helped to found the Women's Action Alliance, the National Women's Political Caucus, and Choice USA. She was the founding president of the Ms. Foundation for Women and helped create Take Our Daughters to Work Day. She recently co-founded the Women's Media Center and GreenStone Media. She has served on the board of trustees of Smith College, and was a member of the Beyond Racism Initiative, a comparative study of racial patterns in the U.S., South Africa, and Brazil. She has also co-produced a documentary on child abuse for HBO, and a feature film for Lifetime.
In 2013 Steinem was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
Beyoncé
Musician, a business mogul, a feminist, a mother, and a brand whose cultural gravity seems to emanate not from any one of these talents but from all of them in concert.
Throughout her career, Beyoncé has sold over 100 million records worldwide, making her one of the world's best-selling music artists. She has won 22 Grammy Awards and is the most nominated woman in the award's history. In 2014, she became the highest-paid black musician in history and was listed among Time's 100 most influential people in the world for a second year in a row. That same year, Forbes declared Beyoncé to be the world’s most powerful celebrity, and she has leveraged her global brand in support of gender equality through her influential charity, the #BeyGood Project. She’s worked with a number of charities and has helped bring awareness to certain causes like Black Lives Matter, gender equality and marriage equality.
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Serena Williams
An American professional tennis player. The Women's Tennis Association (WTA) ranked her world No. 1 in singles on eight separate occasions between 2002 and 2017. She reached the No. 1 ranking for the first time on July 8, 2002. On her sixth occasion, she held the ranking for 186 consecutive weeks, tying the record set by Steffi Graf. In total, she has been No. 1 for 319 weeks, which ranks third in the "Open Era" among female players behind Graf and Martina Navratilova.
Williams holds the most Grand Slam titles in singles, doubles, and mixed doubles combined among active players. Her 39 major titles puts her joint-third on the all-time list and second in the Open Era: 23 in singles, 14 in women's doubles, and two in mixed doubles. She is the most recent female player to have held all four Grand Slam singles titles simultaneously (2002–03 and 2014–15) and the third player to achieve this twice, after Rod Laver and Graf. She is also the most recent player to have won a Grand Slam title on each surface (hard, clay and grass) in one calendar year. She is also, together with her sister Venus, the most recent player to have held all four Grand Slam women's doubles titles simultaneously (2009–10).
Her total of 23 Grand Slam singles titles marks the record for the most Grand Slam wins in the Open Era, and is second on the all-time list behind Margaret Court . She has won an all-time record of 13 Grand Slam singles titles on hard court. Williams holds the Open Era record for most titles won at the Australian Open and shares the Open Era record for most titles won at the US Open with Chris Evert. She also holds the all-time record for the most women's singles matches won at majors with 331 matches. She has also won four Olympic gold medals, one in women's singles and three in women's doubles—an all-time record shared with her sister, Venus.
Earning almost $29 million in prize money and endorsements, Williams was the highest paid female athlete in 2016. She repeated this feat in 2017 when she was the only woman on Forbes' list of the 100 highest paid athletes with $27 million in prize money and endorsements.
Lady Gaga
Lady Gaga is an American singer, songwriter, and actress. She is known for her unconventionality and provocative work, as well as visual experimentation.
Having sold 27 million albums and 146 million singles as of January 2016, Gaga is one of the best-selling music artists in history. Her achievements include several Guinness World Records, six Grammys, three Brit Awards, and an award from the Songwriters Hall of Fame and the Council of Fashion Designers of America. Gaga has been declared Billboard's Artist of the Year and included among Forbes's power and earnings rankings.
Gaga has been often regarded as a trailblazer for sometimes utilizing controversy to bring attention to various issues. Time placed Gaga on their All-Time 100 Fashion Icons List, stating: "Lady Gaga is just as notorious for her outrageous style as she is for her pop hits.
She is known for her philanthropy and social activism, including LGBT rights, and for her non-profit organization, the Born This Way Foundation, which focuses on promoting youth empowerment and combating bullying.
Selma Blair
An American actress. She played a number of small roles in films and on television before obtaining recognition for her leading role in the film Brown's Requiem. Her breakthrough came when she starred as Zoe Bean on the WB sitcom Zoe, Duncan, Jack and Jane, and as Cecile Caldwell in the cult film Cruel Intentions. Blair continued to find success with the comedies Legally Blonde and The Sweetest Thing , and achieved international fame with her portrayal of Liz Sherman in the big-budget fantasy films Hellboy and Hellboy II: The Golden Army. In 2010, Blair narrated the audiobook The Diary of Anne Frank, earning a nomination for the Grammy Award for Best Spoken Word Album for Children.
Thank you, Selma Blair, for sharing your courageous journey through life with MS, for bringing awareness to this illness, for spreading hope to those also suffering, and for being an inspiration to so many. Sending love and positive energy to you and the millions of others fighting the MS battle.
Selma Blair made her first red carpet appearance on Sunday at the Vanity Fair Oscars Party after revealing her MS diagnosis in October of 2018.
She has opened up about her struggles with multiple sclerosis stating "I’m happy, and if I can help anyone be more comfortable in their skin, it’s more than I’ve ever done before."
Blair has posted openly about her health struggles and successes on social media. "There is a truth with neurogedenerative brain disease. It is uncomfortable," Blair, 46, began in an Instagram post. "It is a stadium of uncontrollable anxiety at times. Going out, being sociable holds a heavy price. My brain is on fire. I am freezing. We feel alone with it even though the loving support has been a god send and appreciated.
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Taylor Swift
Taylor Swift is an American singer-songwriter. As one of the world's leading contemporary recording artists, she is known for narrative songs about her personal life, which have received widespread media coverage.
Swift is one of the best-selling music artists of all time, having sold more than 50 million albums—including 27.8 million in the US—and 150 million single downloads. As a songwriter, she has received awards from the Nashville Songwriters Association and the Songwriters Hall of Fame, and was included in Rolling Stone's 100 Greatest Songwriters of All Time in 2015. She is also the recipient of 10 Grammys, one Emmy, 23 Billboard Music Awards, and 12 Country Music Association Awards, and she holds six Guinness World Records. She is one of twelve women to appear in Time's 100 most influential people in the world at least three times (2010, 2015, 2019), and Forbes' lists of top-earning women in music (2011–2015), 100 most powerful women (2015), and Celebrity 100 (2016). Her inclusion in the third of these made her the youngest woman on the list, and she ranked first in Celebrity 100.
Swift was ranked Forbes magazine's highest paid celebrity under 30 in 2012, beating out Justin Bieber, Rihanna and Lady Gaga with earnings of $57 million. The following year, the musician shared some of her fortune to help others, funding the $4 million Taylor Swift Education Center at the Country Music Hall of Fame in Nashville.
Her new music video featuring Brendon Urie was viewed 65.2 million times in the first 24 hours of being released, setting a new Vevo record.
Yoko Ono
A Japanese multimedia artist, singer, songwriter and peace activist. Her work also encompasses performance art, which she performs in both English and Japanese and filmmaking. singer-songwriter John Lennon of the Beatles was her third husband.
Ono has been an activist for peace and human rights since the 1960s. After she and Lennon married in Gibraltar, they held a March 1969 "Bed-In for Peace" in their honeymoon suite at the Amsterdam Hilton Hotel. The newlyweds were eager to talk about and promote world peace; they wore pajamas and invited visitors and members of the press. Two months later, Ono and Lennon held another Bed-In at the Queen Elizabeth Fairmont in Montreal, where they recorded their first single, "Give Peace A Chance". The song became a top-20 hit for the newly christened Plastic Ono Band.
Ono made music history in 2011, becoming the oldest artist to have a number-one hit on the dance charts. She was 78 years old when "Move on Fast" made it to the top spot.
As Lennon's widow, Ono works to preserve his legacy. She funded Strawberry Fields in Manhattan's Central Park, the Imagine Peace Tower in Iceland, and the John Lennon Museum in Saitama, Japan (which closed in 2010). She has made significant philanthropic contributions to the arts, peace, Philippine and Japan disaster relief, and other causes. In 2012, Ono received the Dr. Rainer Hildebrandt Human Rights Award. The award is given annually in recognition of extraordinary, nonviolent commitment to human rights. Ono continued her social activism when she inaugurated a biennial $50,000 LennonOno Grant for Peace in 2002. She also co-founded the group Artists Against Fracking in 2012.
Chloe Kim
Chloe Kim is an American snowboarder.At the 2018 Winter Olympics, she became the youngest woman to win an Olympic snowboarding medal when she won gold in the women's snowboard halfpipe at the age of 17 years. She is a four-time X Games gold medalist and the first woman to win two gold medals in snowboarding at the Winter Youth Olympic Games. She is the current World, Olympic, Youth Olympic and X games champion in the half pipe, and the first to win the title at all three major events.
Diana Ross
American singer, record producer, and actress who achieved international stardom as leader of the vocal group the Supremes, which, during the 1960s, became Motown's most successful act, and are the best charting girl group in US history, as well as one of the world's best-selling girl groups of all time. The group released a record-setting twelve number-one hit singles on the US Billboard Hot 100.
Ross’s professional career began in 1959, when she joined several neighbourhood friends to form the pop-soul vocal group the Primettes. The group was renamed the Supremes after signing a recording contract with Motown late the following year. In 1967 the group was renamed Diana Ross and the Supremes, foreshadowing Ross’s solo career. Following her departure from the Supremes in 1970, Ross released her eponymous debut solo album that same year, which contained the Top 20 Pop hit "Reach Out and Touch (Somebody's Hand)" and the number-one Pop hit "Ain't No Mountain High Enough". She later released the album Touch Me in the Morning in 1973; its title track reached number 1, as her second solo No. 1 hit. That same year, her album Lady Sings the Blues, which was the original soundtrack of her film based on the life of jazz singer Billie Holiday, went to no. 1 on the Billboard 200 albums chart, selling more than 300,000 copies within its first 8 days of release.
Ross was named the "Female Entertainer of the Century" by Billboard magazine. In 1993, the Guinness Book of World Records declared Ross the most successful female music artist in history, due to her success in the United States and United Kingdom for having more hits than any female artist in the charts, with a career total of 70 hit singles with her work with the Supremes and as a solo artist.
With the Supremes, she was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1988. Ross was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2016. She is a 12-time Grammy nominee, never earning a competitive honor, but later became the recipient of the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 2012.
she's adorable. i bet she'll grow up to be an empowering woman too <3
I learned a lot from this! She’s so happy to be the focus of her mom’s attention and she’ll be so knowledgeable.
she's adorable. i bet she'll grow up to be an empowering woman too <3
I learned a lot from this! She’s so happy to be the focus of her mom’s attention and she’ll be so knowledgeable.