Women I Admire

Today, the world lost one of the most ground-breaking women in recent history: Margaret Thatcher. She was one of the first female leaders of a major country. She held her own in a political world dominated by men, where a tough woman was often ridiculed or, worse, dismissed. She opened the political door for other women like US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard, Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, and countless other female world leaders. In her honor, here are a few other famous women that I admire (in no particular order).


Audrey Hepburn

 Not only was she an amazingly talented and versatile actress, winning an Oscar (for "Roman Holiday"), a Tony (for "Ondine"), an Emmy (posthumously, for "Gardens of the World with Audrey Hepburn"), and a Grammy (for "Audrey Hepburn's Enchanted Tales," a recording of children's stories), but she was also well-known for her humanitarian work as a Goodwill Ambassador for UNICEF, for which she won a Presidential Medal of Honor.

JK Rowling

Rowling was divorced from an abusive husband, unemployed, a single mother, and struggling from severe depression when she began writing the Harry Potter books. The first book was rejected by twelve - TWELVE!!! - publishing houses. Rowling persevered, and we all know what happened. She was wise enough to retain a significant amount of creative control and financial stake in the many off-shoots of the franchise, and as a result has earned literally hundreds of millions of dollars. She has donated much of her earnings to charitable organizations dedicated to causes ranging from poverty to multiple sclerosis to illiteracy to children's welfare, including penning three books specifically for charities, which have earned nearly $30 million.

Laura Ingraham

Her politics may rub many the wrong way, but she is well informed, well-spoken, and unafraid to take on serious issues even in the face of heavy opposition. She is outspoken about her Catholic faith and her decision to adopt three children as a single mother. She is a breast cancer survivor, a former speechwriter for President Ronald Reagan, and a best-selling author. She is unafraid to admit that she is wrong and apologize for her mistakes, as notably illustrated by her essay published in the Washington Post in 1997 where she publicly announced her changed views of homosexuality and her support of legal rights for gays.

Maggie Smith

Dame Maggie's acting career has included stage, television, and movie roles as diverse as Desdemona in "Othello" (opposite Laurence Olivier), the title role in "The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie," a grown up Wendy Darling in "Hook," Professor Minerva McGonagall in the Harry Potter film series, and the Dowager Countess in "Downton Abbey." Her charity work is equally diverse, supporting fundraising efforts for a New Zealand church that was devastated by the 2011 earthquake, becoming a patron of the International Glaucoma Association, and contributing original artwork to a celebrity auction raising funds for cat protection. She is also a breast cancer survivor.

Rosa Parks

Her single act of civil disobedience may have been no different than similar acts performed by others, but it set off a chain of events that eventually led to desegregation. But even aside from that one famous incident, Ms. Parks' life is admirable. As a child, she walked to school with the other black children while watching the white children go by in school buses. She eventually had to drop out of school to care for her grandmother and her ailing mother. After she married, her husband encouraged her to finish high school, which she did in 1933, at a time when only 7% of African Americans earned high school diplomas. She became a registered voter, despite being refused twice. She published an autobiography in 1992, in which she stated, "People always say that I didn't give up my seat because I was tired, but that isn't true. I was not tired physically, or no more tired than I usually was at the end of a working day. I was not old, although some people have an image of me as being old then. I was forty-two. No, the only tired I was, was tired of giving in."



Whom do you admire?

The World's Classiest Soap Opera

I’ve seen it discussed on Facebook. I’ve overheard conversations about it between my in-laws. I’ve seen ads for it on PBS. I’ve critiqued some of the actresses’ gowns at awards shows. I’ve even participated in a virtual tea party inspired by it. But until last night, I had never actually watched an episode of “Downton Abbey.”

Needless to say, I am hooked.

My husband watches it occasionally, so he attempted to fill me in on the various characters’ relationships and plotlines, both of which are more convoluted than any daytime drama or nighttime soap I’ve ever seen. After watching a single (albeit 2-hour) episode, this is my take on the phenomenon that is “Downton Abbey.”

The world of DA is filled with pretty, blond, young men. Most of them are high-class gentlemen who have married into the family. Several of them are actually houseboys or footmen. And one of them used to be the chauffeur but then he married one of the ladies of the house (and I mean “lady” literally, as in, “the Lady Sybil,” not just, “the lady, Sybil”) who promptly died in childbirth, leaving him with a baby daughter and a gaping rift between himself and both the family and the servants. The prettiest young man of all [MAJOR SPOILER ALERT] held his first child (a premie who miraculously weighed about 12 pounds at birth and could already hold his head up) and then immediately drove his car into a truck and died.

Does it get any soapier than that?

But because it is both British and a drama, there are a number of characters who are less than Hollywood gorgeous. There are two young blond women with long noses who are generally rather plain but who light up when they smile that I kept confusing with each other. One of them is the daughter of the house who is considered to be “the homely one;” the other is a former housemaid who has been promoted to being a lady’s maid but who is still called by her first name by the family, which is apparently something of a scandal among the servants. She is also married to a man with dark hair, which indicates that he must be also a servant. Among the men, the most obvious not-leading-man-looks belong to Carson, the head butler. Carson is feared among the staff because of his sharpness and high standards. It’s hard to tell from the single episode I saw whether he is generally a sympathetic character or a disliked one, but this particular episode showed the soft marshmallow center inside his crusty exterior, as he gave the servants a day off and declined to join them, recognizing that his presence would curtail their fun, and then proceeded to march into the nursery where the baby was screeching and bounce her in his arms to soothe her while cooing to her. (It says a great deal about the actor himself that the baby was actually screaming – not dubbed – and immediately stopped crying when he picked her up.)

Naturally, no discussion of DA would be complete without mentioning the costumes. The Dowager Countess, played by Dame Maggie Smith (more on her shortly), made her first appearance wearing a stunning grey-green heavy velvet coat and matching hat.

Lady Mary’s burgundy velvet coat with gold trim and matching cloche made me moan with envy. The teenaged Rose caused a bit of a scandal by appearing in a party dress that revealed much too much back and shoulders for her mother’s taste, which caused said mother to call her a slut, which in turn caused Maggie Smith to raise her eyebrows and very drily say, “Well, THAT’S not a word you hear every day.” Every hat was more glamorous than the last. And then there were the tiaras. Who wouldn’t love to live in an era when people wear tiaras on a regular basis?

 

 

And then, there’s Maggie Smith. Oh, Maggie. The woman who can deliver lines like, “That’s the thing about nature. There’s just so much of it,” with a curled lip and an air of disdain, like no other living actress. She can say more with a cocked eyebrow or a purse of her lips than most actors can with an entire page of dialog.

I don’t regret for an instant that I finally followed the herd and became a fan of DA. I only regret that I did it at a time when there won’t be any new episodes for nearly a year. Fortunately, I have three whole seasons to catch up with between now and then!