Week 52: Mae West

“You’re never too old to become younger.”

—Mae West
American actress, playwright and screenwriter

Week 51: Elizabeth Gilbert

“There is hardly a more gracious gift that we can
offer somebody than to accept them fully, to love

them almost despite themselves.”

—Elizabeth Gilbert
Journalist and Author of
“Eat, Pray, Love”

Week 50: Minnie Pearl

“The doctor must have put my pacemaker in wrong. Every time my husband kisses me, the garage door goes up.”

—Minnie Pearl
Sarah Ophelia Colley Cannon
Country Comedian
The Sarah Cannon Cancer Center
was named in her honor

Week 49: Judith Jones

“If you like good food, why not honor yourself enough to make a pleasing meal and relish every mouthful?”

—Judith Jones

Senior Editor and Vice President
at Alfred A. Knopf; published
Julia Child’s first book and
remained her editor ever after

Week 48: Anne Lamott

“We begin to find and become ourselves when we notice how we are already found, already truly, entirely, wildly, messily, marvelously who we were born to be.”
—Anne Lamott

Author of novels and works of non-fiction,
acclaimed public speaker and writing teacher often referred to as the
“People’s Author”

Week 47: Mo'Nique

“FAT means fabulous and thick, full and tasty, fluffy and tender.”

—Mo’Nique


TV hostess, comedian and actress who never apologizes for her size, but in a CBS interview also stresses: "I want to be very clear about what I've always said: Big is beautiful. Let's be big, beautiful, healthy people."

Week 46: Emma Watson

“I think young people like me are becoming increasingly aware of the humanitarian and environmental issues surrounding fast fashion...”

—Emma Watson

British actress who plays Hermione Granger in the Harry Potter films on partnering with People Tree, Free Trade Company

Week 45: Alice Walker

“How simple a thing it seems to me that to know ourselves as we are, we must know our mothers’ names.”

—Alice Walker

American author most known for
The Color Purple, winner of the
Pulitzer Prize for Fiction

Week 44: Amelia Earhart

“In soloing - as in other activities - it is far easier to start something than it is to finish it.”

—Amelia Earhart

American aviation pioneer
and author who was the first
woman to receive the
Distinguished Flying Cross

Week 43: Ayn Rand

“The question isn’t who is going to let me; it’s who is going to stop me?” The Fountainhead

—Ayn Rand

Russian-American novelist, philosopher, playwright, and screenwriter

Week 42: Beverly Sills

“There are no short cuts to any place worth going.”

—Beverly Sills

Operatic soprano who later became general manager of NYC opera and chairman of Lincoln Center &
The Metropolitan Opera

Week 41: Elizabeth Somer

“If you want to feel your best, you have to eat the best.”

—Elizabeth Somer, M.A., R.D.

Author and leading authority on nutrition and diet as well as contributor on national TV
Self-Assessment

Week 40: Shirley Chisholm

From Address on Equal Rights for Women Given To The US House Of Representatives,
Washington, DC: May 21, 1969

“...I wish to introduce today a proposal that has been before every Congress for the last 40 years and that sooner or later must become part of the basic law of the land -- the equal rights amendment.”

—Shirley Chisholm

American politician,
educator and author

Week 39: Rita Rudner

“I was going to have cosmetic surgery until I noticed that the doctor’s office was full of portraits by Picasso.”

—Rita Rudner

Comedian, actress & writer

Week 38: Monica Seles

“I stopped dieting and
I started living life. That's how I lost 37 pounds.”

—Monica Seles
Former #1 World Tennis Champion

Week 37: Mary Coyle Chase

“It's quite possible to leave your home for a walk in the early morning air and return a different person—beguiled, enchanted.”

—Mary Coyle Chase

Journalist, playwright and screenwriter,

primarily known for having written the

Broadway play Harvey.

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize (drama)

Week 36: Nancy Astor

“Basic beauty lies in the way a woman walks; it is health and an attitude to life.”


—Nancy Astor
First woman to serve
as a Member of Parliament
in the British House of Commons

Week 35: Tina Turner

“The real power behind whatever success I have now was something I found within myself - something that's in all of us, I think, a little piece of God just waiting to be discovered.”

—Tina Turner

Singer & Actress
“The Queen of Rock n’ Roll”

Quote O Magazine (December 2003)

Week 34: Golda Meir

“Those who do not know how to weep with their whole heart don't know how to laugh either.”


—Golda Meir

Fourth Prime Minister of the State of Israel

Week 33: Christine Verstraete

"Butter cookies," Lita said. "Any cookies really. They always work on me."

—Christine Verstraete

Author and journalist

Quote from her book:
Searching for a
Starry Night:
A Miniature Art Mystery










"When one woman helps another woman, the world wins." db

Week 32: Dorothy Parker

“I’ve never been a millionaire but I just know I’d be darling at it.”

—Dorothy Parker

Below by Al Hirschfeld

Week 31: Dr. Jill Taylor

“...the blessing I had received from this experience was the knowledge that deep internal peace is accessible to anyone at any time.”

—Dr. Jill Taylor

Harvard-trained and published neuroanatomist
who in 1996 experienced a severe hemorrhage in the
left hemisphere of her brain

Photo: Dr. Jill with her mother G.G. (Credit Kip May)
Quote from her New York Times bestselling book:

Week 30: Lisel Mueller

“What a language it is,
the laughter of women.”

—Lisel Mueller

Pulitzer Prize-winning poet born in Germany,
immigrated to America when 15 years old.

Week 29: Whoopi Goldberg

“I don’t have pet peeves,
I have whole kennels of irritation.”

—Whoopi Goldberg


Actress, comedienne, media personality
Pictured here at Comic Relief 2006

Week 28: Marie Curie

“You cannot hope to build a better world without improving the individuals. To that end each of us must work for his own improvement, and at the same time share a general responsibility for all humanity, our particular duty being to aid those to whom we think we can be most useful.”

—Marie Curie

A physicist and pioneer in the field of radioactivity, the first person honored with two Nobel Prizes and the first female professor at the University of Paris.

Below picture: First Solvay Conference (1911), Skłodowska-Curie (seated, 2nd from right) confers with Henri Poincaré. Standing, 4th from right, is Rutherford; 2nd from right, Einstein; far right, Paul Langevin.

Week 27: Julia Cameron

“What we really want to do is what we are really meant to do. When we do what we are meant to do, money comes to us, doors open for us, we feel useful, and the work we do feels like play to us.”


—Julia Cameron

Award-winning poet, playwright and filmmaker, and author of 30 books including the hugely successful work on creativity, The Artist’s Way.

Week 26: Martha Washington

“I am still determined to be cheerful and happy, in whatever situation I may be; for I have also learned from experience that the greater part of our happiness or misery depends upon our dispositions, and not upon our circumstances.”


—Martha Washington

The first “First Lady of the
United States” accompanied
her husband on the battlefield
and was instrumental
in maintaining troop morale
during the infamous winter
at Valley Forge.

Week 25: Vera Wang

“A woman is never sexier than when she's comfortable in her clothes. That's it. End of story.”


—Vera Wang

American fashion designer.
Wang trained for the Olympics
In 1968 and was featured in
Sports Illustrated. When she
failed to make the team,
she went into the fashion
industry. Left Vogue when
turned down for editor-in-chief
and opened her own design
salon.

Week 24: Anne Sullivan

“People seldom see the halting and painful steps by which the most insignificant success is achieved."

--Anne Sullivan Macy
Teacher & tutor of
Helen Keller

Week 23: Sister Chan Khong

“If we just worry about the big picture, we are powerless. So my secret is to start right away doing whatever little work I can do. I try to give joy to one person in the morning, and remove the suffering of one person in the afternoon. . . . That is the secret. Start right now.”


--Sister Chan Khong
Expatriate Vietnamese Buddhist nun, peace activist

Week 22: Roseanne Barr

“The thing women have got to learn is that nobody gives you power. You just take it.”


--Roseanne Barr
Comedian, four-time
Emmy award winning
actress

Roseanne's World Video

Article on how Violence against women is a world crisis

Week 21: Eleanor Roosevelt

“To this day I do not feel I have had a career. What I have done is to live every experience to the utmost.”

--Eleanor Roosevelt
First Lady of the United States, 1933 to 1945,
co-founder of Freedom House,
helped with the formation of the UN.
Quote from You Learn By Living

Week 20: Toni Morrison

“She is a friend of mind. She gather me, man. The pieces I am, she gather them and give them back to me in all the right order. It's good, you know, when you got a woman who is a friend of your mind.”


--Toni Morrison

Nobel prize-winning
author, editor &
professor
Quote from Beloved
Toni Morrison on The Bluest Eye

Week 19: Valerie Monroe

“Among a certain population
-- one that includes me, as it happens --

the notion of applying an elixir that instantly

smoothes away lines can precipitate the kind of thrill once reserved for a long-awaited pregnancy (or job offer).”

--Valerie Monroe
Writer, Editor and
currently beauty director at
O Magazine

Photo: John Skow

Week 18: Donna Michael

“Light works best when it shines on where we are going, not where we have been. That's the place for the shadows, and true clarity comes from realizing that we cannot know the brilliance of the light without the depth of darkness.”


--Donna Michael
Internationally-known speaker, visionary leader, minister, classically-trained musician, songwriter & Radical Forgiveness coach

Hear Donna's amazing song and view her inspiring video "A Light In This World."

Week 17: Francine Ward

“From the moment I decided to become a lawyer, I was told I would never meet the requirements—that I’d never make it. They said my criminal record would get in the way. They said people like me--women who’d come from where I came from didn’t stand a chance. That women like me didn’t become lawyers, we paid lawyers!...But they were wrong.”

--Francine Ward
Self-esteem coach, inspiring speaker, author, lawyer

Week 16: Ellen DeGeneres

“I’m a godmother, that’s a great thing to be, a godmother. She calls me god for short, that’s cute, I taught her that."


--Ellen DeGeneres
Emmy-Award winning
comedienne, TV host, actress & author...

Quote from My Point And I Do Have One

Week 15: Maria Campbell

“I had no money...I decided to go back out in the street and work...But I just couldn’t ...I'd be back on drugs again . . . I started writing a letter [to myself] because I had to have somebody to talk to, and there was nobody ... that was how I wrote Halfbreed."

--Maria Campbell
Métis author, playwright, broadcaster, filmmaker, and Elder

Halfbreed, still taught today in schools across Canada, has inspired generations of indigenous women and men.