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Women of the Year 2008
By
Published: Jan 01, 2008
Category:
Beyond Classification
Women of the Year
It’s Veteran’s Day, and my plan was to write about war books, and how war has changed from an ugly gutting of innocent boys to even more horrifying violence against civilians.
But I went to Carnegie Hall last night for Glamour Magazine’s Women of the Year Awards, and I came away thinking of the Dylan line: “If you cannot bring good news, then don’t bring any.” Because the Glamour Awards fulfilled that obligation, and then some — the night’s news was so radiant that any reasonable person would conclude peace is coming and women are its bearers.
And I got that despite the fact that the show was world-class dazzling — it started with a song from Fergie of the Black Eyed Peas, and the first presenter was Natalie Portman, and the honorees included Nicole Kidman, Tyra Banks and the bikini-clad volleyball partners who won gold medals at the Olympics.
Hillary Clinton got a standing ovation, but the biggest cheers — and by far the most tears — were for Nujood Ali & Shada Nasser. In Yemen, when she was nine, her parents arranged for Nujood to marry a 30-year-old. He promised to keep her pure until he was older. He lied. So when she was just 10, she went to the courthouse. There she met Shada Nasser, a terrific human rights lawyer. And Nasser got the little girl divorced.
Our daughter is six-and-a-half — I try and try, and I can’t begin to imagine what Nujood has seen.
But I absolutely understand why, when she grows up, she wants to be a lawyer.
There were common threads. Every woman talked about the power of dreams and never giving up on them. Mother after mother was acknowledged as key to self-confidence in later life. And Nicole Kidman had a line all her own: “Rebellion creates character.”
There were hundreds of young girls seated in the rafters. They weren’t from New York’s fancy private schools — you could hear that in their screams. But you could also hear that they burned to be Somebody, and that, with Barack Obama’s election, they had fresh reason to think they could be. Can they? Well, as the playwright Tony Kushner says, “The world only spins forward.”
I looked into the Butler archives to see if I could make my own “Women of the Year” awards. I can, even though I’m cheating a bit — when almost everything ever published is available on the Web, what is a year? Glamour had nine categories; here are my nine.
Samantha Power
A Problem from Hell is a landmark book about a topic every country usually steps around — genocide.
Kris Holloway
Monique and the Mango Rains: Two Years with a Midwife in Mali shows what one woman can do, even without much in the way of resources.
Naomi Klein
The Shock Doctrine tells us what big business does while we’re helping the victims of hurricanes and other disasters.
Peg Tyre
The Trouble With Boys tells parents how schools cheat their sons and how they can deal.
Deborah Rodriguez
Kabul Beauty School chronicles an effort to build self-esteem in Afghanistan.
Marion Winik
The Glen Rock Book of the Dead celebrates the ones she’s loved and lost.
Patricia Ryan Madson
Improv Wisdom reminds you to win just by showing up.
Esther Perel
Mating in Captivity: Unlocking Erotic Intelligence finds the heat in monogamy.
Pamela Miles
Reiki introduces you to a gentle form of healing.
Nine, already? So many women left out. And so many others, unknown, doing the hard and critical work of healing, nurturing, teaching. Bless them all. Too many men still seem to think that war is a video game, just with really lifelike targets.
