role models : page 2 : quotes articles books ........Talent Development Resources --..home page...site map
I think that in a way we're not showing girls something that they aren't capable of, right now. The angels aren't out there going, "By the way, this is who you should be and this is where women are going to end up." I think we're holding up a mirror to women right now and saying that this is who you are, what you're capable of, and what you are doing at the present time. Women are capable of doing so many things these days, physically, emotionally, within relationships and career. ... I feel really proud about where women are right now.
Cameron Diaz - about "Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle" .. [Dark Horizons.com interview 6/23/03]
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Over the next decade, feminist quarterly BUST magazine found its niche with young women who were disillusioned not only with the stereotypes found in typical "women's magazines" but also with a previous generation's feminist journals. "An over-abundance of positive role models can be just as stifling as a bevy of anorexic supermodels," says [co-publisher] Debbie Stoller. ...
[PRNewswire, May 22 2003]
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Reese Witherspoon has found the ideal way to make sure her Barbie-loving daughter Ava has politically correct dolls - she's created her own. The actress has linked up with toy-makers Mattel to create a new Barbie modeled on her Legally Blonde character Elle Woods. The idea came to her when she was looking for politically correct Barbie dolls for her daughter. Reese says, "She loves Barbies and at first I thought, 'Is she presenting the right image to women' - and then I found President Of The United States Barbie and I got so inspired... And now, Elle Woods is going to be a Barbie and all my proceeds are going to charity."...[imdb.com/PeopleNews 5/5/03]
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Everyone has a responsibility to be a role model.
It's a responsibility we want.Brandi Chastain - referring to the U.S. women's soccer team .. [Moxie mag., Millennium 2000]
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Role model is such a weird term. There are people who inspire me, but ultimately you have to model yourself after yourself.
Jena Malone
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And while women and girls can derive strength and inspiration from stories of heroic men, the dearth of similar stories about women leaves many of us believing that should we strive for adventure and self-awareness, we have no alternative but to model ourselves after - or be rescued by - men. This extant ethos affects our lives today in very harmful ways. From the religious myths of the ancient world to the secular myths of the modern world, the stereotype of the heroine reinforces the restrictive attitudes toward women in patriarchal cultures.
The power of this myth makes it extremely difficult for women to be seen as strong, resourceful, courageous, and real, the ingredients of true heroic stature.
Further, it has led too many women to repress or deny any desire they might feel for heroic adventure, either because they are taught to fear reprisal or because they are kept ignorant of their powerful potential.
In addition, the image of the heroine has a particularly toxic effect upon women of color. Although all women are bombarded with stories about "passive and pretty" heroines from their earliest childhood, these mass-marketed models are usually white.
..
....The Sound of a Silver Horn: Reclaiming the Heroism in Contemporary Women's Lives - by Kathleen Noble, Ph.D.
..interview: Kathleeen Noble
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Drew Barrymore says, "Young girls come up to me all the time to ask for advice. I think they see me as a survivor. They figure if I can be happy after all I've gone through, there's hope for everyone." Before she was 18, Barrymore had grappled with alcoholism, drug addiction and numerous failed relationships. On her Saturday Night Live appearance this year she sang a hilarious tell-all song detailing her public and private sins.
"I don't have any no-comment areas in my life. It's all been documented," she says. "I jumped at the chance to make fun of myself, but I told the writers not to make it so mean that I'd go home depressed. It's not just fun but healthy to laugh at yourself and I've been laughing up a storm for a couple of years now." [Calgary Sun, April 4, 1999]
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I worked hard to be what people wanted. I used to be obsessed with wanting their approval, way back to my childhood.
..
..Particularly the black community. So many black people would approach me and say, "My daughter aspires to be like you. Stay positive."
So I'd try to stay that way. I thought that if I did nudity, I'd let them down and send the wrong message to those girls. But then I realized it's not my job to raise those girls.
Halle Berry... [LA Times, January 2, 2002]
To be honest with you, I don't think that one moment in time [being the first African-American actress to receive Best Actress Oscar - for Monster's Ball] changed an entire industry that has been racist from its conception. We live in a world that is racist and racism exists everywhere, so the Oscar didn't really change anything.
However, what it did do, was it inspired people. I know that to be true because in the last seven months, people have come up to me and written me countless letters saying stuff like: Because you've won, I can now continue to dream; I lost hope but it's renewed now.
So I think those inspired people will eventually force the change, because those same people before that night may have decided to drop out... while now they know it's possible - and not just Black actresses, but Spanish and Asian actors as well.
Halle Berry.....[darkhorizons.com Nov 13, 2002]
> more quotes in article: Being A Role Model
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You can only live your life and set an example. I'm just really lucky I get to work on the show ['Buffy..'], play Tara and be a role model. When you go into business and do something in this world, you want to make an impact, and I feel with this character I'm really making an impact. Of course, you're scared, because you have to live your life in a better way. You can't run around at all hours and be a little actor sh*t. I feel that I have to live a better life and watch what I do, so that when young girls see us on TV, they see a character, and also the real person behind.
Amber Benson - from"Hitting all the right notes," Dreamwatch Magazine, November 2001 - posted on AmberBenson.net
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Psychologist Gloria Wright, Ph.D. has written, "We tend to think of celebrities or people we don't know well as role models and people we know as mentors. "But I don't think it's as simple as that. My definition of a positive mentor is someone whose influence you integrate to help you improve or accomplish goals, while leaving your true self intact."
That idea is echoed in a comment by Prof. Kathleen Noble: "A woman to live heroically must belong to herself alone; she must be the center of her own life to pursue a wholeness or integrity that is fluid, inclusive and interconnected... a female hero must insist upon herself, something that most women are neither taught nor encouraged to do."
>> from article: Being A Role Model
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"A woman to live heroically must belong to herself alone; she must be the center of her own life to pursue a wholeness or integrity that is fluid, inclusive and interconnected..." Prof. Kathleen Noble ..from article:...Being A Role Model - by Douglas Eby.
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Baroness Bertha Sophie Felicita von Suttner, accorded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1905
from site: Heroines of Peace - The Nine Nobel Women
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....
America went to war in 1941, and Wonder Woman -- "beautiful as Aphrodite, wise as Athena, stronger than Hercules and swifter than Mercury" -- entered comics.
..
..Her creator, psychologist William Moulton Marston, coincidentally also the inventor of the lie detector, intended to design a heroine for girls in the all-male world of comic books, and succeeded admirably with a mixture of mythology and feminism.
When handsome pilot Steve Trevor crashes his plane on the matriarchal Paradise Island, amazon Princess Diana dons a costume based on the American flag and departs with him for "Man's World", to fight fascism and defend sisterhood and democracy. The constant message in Wonder Woman was that girls could do anything boys could do, and often better, especially if they stuck together.
from article Women in Comics - An Introductory Guide
by Trina Robbins
-.-books by Trina Robbins :
Eternally Bad: Goddesses With Attitude
From Girls to Grrlz : A History of Women's Comics from Teens to Zines
photo: Lynda Carter as Wonder Woman
related article Warrior Women On Screen
by Douglas Eby....~ ~ ~ ~........
In a 1943 issue of The American Scholar, William Moulton Marston said: "Not even girls want to be girls so long as our feminine archetype lacks force, strength, and power. ... "Women's strong qualities have become despised because of their weakness. The obvious remedy is to create a feminine character with all the strength of Superman plus all the allure of a good and beautiful woman."
from The Wonder Woman Pages site
-.-Wonder Woman by William Moulton Marston
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Mary Louise Parker, Kate Winslet, Cate Blanchett [are role models]. I look to actors that I don't really know anything about personally. When I know too much about an actor's personal life and then watch them on screen, it's hard to watch them transform. I'm watching their celebrity.
Julia Stiles
from article Stars of 'Mona Lisa' smile on their good fortune - By Claudia Puig,
usatoday.com Dec 18 2003 / photo from "Mona Lisa Smile"
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......
Famous Mensa Members 1. Geena Davis [right]
1988 Academy Award winner (for The Accidental Tourist) and an expert archer!2. Scott Adams
Creator of the internationally syndicated comic strip "Dilbert."3. Joyce Carol Oates [left]
Author of dozens of books, including one that won the National Book Award, and a professor at Princeton University.4. Richard Lederer
Word expert and punster who is a frequent guest on National Public Radio.5. Norman Schwarzkopf
Planned Operation Desert Storm, the campaign that liberated Kuwait during the Persian Gulf War.6. Patricia Jennings
Keyboardist for the Pittsburgh Symphony.7. Buckminster Fuller
Engineer, designer, architect, and writer who once said, "I just invent. Then I wait until man comes around to needing what I've invented."8. Marilyn vos Savant
Reputed to have the world's highest recorded IQ. Answers brainteasers each week in her Parade magazine column "Ask Marilyn."9. Isaac Asimov
Best known for his science-fiction writing. Wrote more than 400 books, including mystery stories, humor, history, and several volumes on the Bible and William Shakespeare.10. Alan Rachins
Played a lawyer on the Emmy Award-winning television program L.A. Law and currently plays Dharma's hippy father on Dharma and Greg.Membership information provided by American Mensa
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"Women were marvelously empowered in the 1940s. They could be intelligent
and funny and sexy and all of those things. It's gotten a little cloudy out there
for women since then."Linda Hamilton [LA Times 11.15.00]
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Natalie Portman says she found her role of Queen Amidala in "Star Wars" so meaningful because, "You don't get to see young women on film as rulers, ever. I don't think there's ever been someone who's that young as a queen and I think that's so wonderful, because young girls don't have that kind of role model in their lives... Girls [lose] a lot of confidence in themselves as they grow up. They become much more worried about their looks than their intelligence or their personalities or their kindness or their souls."
<< from article: Being A Role Model
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"Whenever people ask me about role models, I honestly don't know what to say except for my mom. It's corny, but it's absolutely true. Because she taught me everything about how it's not about getting a man... and it's not about what you look like... that it's about enjoying your life and making it what you want it to be.She always has done that. And she's an artist, which I really admire. Because doing something where you basically make no money off of it, but you do it and do it and do it because you love it is inspiring."
Jane Pratt (Editor-in-Chief of "Jane" magazine) [Oxygen Live on AOL, July 22.99]
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Amanda Micheli's search for role models left her bruised and battered when she strapped herself to a bucking bronco at age 20. Why did she do it? 'Cowgirls were the heroes of my childhood imagination,' she says. 'I figured the best way to grasp the feeling they had was to try it myself.'
Amanda climbed into the saddle to make a film about women rodeo riders for her undergraduate thesis at Harvard. The result is "Just for the Ride," which won a student Academy Award.
[from "Just for the Ride" by Emily Hancock, Moxie, Spring, 1999]
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Being a role model means people are encouraged to go out and be more of themselves.
Lucy Lawless~ ~ ~
"I've always had that connection to kids and trying to do things that are good for them.... I think if I can be a positive role model for kids I'm more than happy to have that be the outcome of my career."
Rosie O'Donnell
~ ~ ~"I have ideas and I'm willing to share them and also willing for someone to say, 'Not your best idea.' .. If you're aggressive and energetic about things, it can be intimidating to people that aren't very smart themselves."
Julia Roberts [mrshowbiz.go.com]
~ ~ ~"[being] fiercely intelligent... most people find very threatening... If I were a petite, brunette, ethnic lawyer, then my behavior would be totally acceptable. But we Barbie dolls are not supposed to behave the way I do."
Sharon Stone>> more in article: Women in Film: Identity and Power
~ ~ ~"When you have people telling you, 'This made me cry,' or 'Girl, you wrote that song for me,'
it makes me feel like I'm moving in the right direction. Beyond what the critics say. Beyond what
the industry says. What the people say."Lauryn Hill
(about writing and producing her album "The Miseducation...") [Entertainment Weekly Online, Dec.98]
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Growing up I
can't say I
had role models, except perhaps Louisa May Alcott; like lots of girls,
I read Little Women, and also her adult novels. She was very political.
The others were people like Eleanor Roosevelt, and since it didn't seem
likely I'd marry a president, though...
It wasn't until later in my thirties that I saw women like Bella Abzug or Norton, and now there are so many it's almost impossible to name. From Alice Walker to Maxine Waters... But really my most important role models are the many women I see around the country who are not famous, and don't get encouragement, and are ridiculed in their families and communities. Gloria Steinem [Yahoo! chat posted on Ms. Magazine] / book: ..Moving Beyond Words video: Gloria Steinem |
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| Any
relationship
makes a difference in a person's life, whether formal or informal. And
a relationship may begin formally and then develop into a close
bond.
I can think of several teachers, who have had a tremendous impact on me, and the involvement remained formal. Truthfully, to be mentored by someone doesn't even require a mentoring 'contract' or mutual agreement to the mentoring. I mean that you may admire someone and study him or her from a distance; that too is mentoring. |
.. .. -.-book:----Soloing : Realizing Your Life's Ambition |
related page:----relationships~ ~ ~
![]() .. .. Who Lived Them - by Katherine Martin [reader:] This book is full of stories from average women who decided to take a stand for themselves or for someone else and suddenly found themselves making a difference in the world. ... Most of the women in this book live average lives like me and I found their acts of courage very inspirational because I could relate to them. It makes you want to cheer for women who color outside of the lines, "good girls" who don't always behave as they are told. These women face fear and keep going. |
Who Lived Them by Katherine Martin [Author:] "The women in this book," says actress Sharon Stone.. "push against the grain, defy complacency, and reach for their dreams. That alone is remarkable, but more remarkable still is that they do it for the good of others. In that, they inspire us all to speak and live from our hearts." She's talking about women like Susan Winston, who had a perfectly accomplished and fulfilled life as a mother of two bright children, wife of a good man, and television producer who, among many other accomplishments, was Christopher Reeve's producer during the Academy Awards several years ago. It surprised no one more than her when she shook up her perfectly stable and steady life to adopt a baby girl from China. Her deeply moving story is one of forty in Women of Courage, a very personal and intimate book written in the voices of the women themselves. |
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--articles:----
Being A Role Model by Douglas Eby
Role models can be examples of how to discover and realize your own unique talents, and inspiration to do more, to be more authentic. A number of prominent actors and other people admired as role models have commented about being responded to that way, and about their own choices.Fictional characters in books as positive role models for adolescent females. (A Student's Perspective)
- by Samantha Melnick [Gifted Child Today Magazine, Spring, 2002]
As I flip through the television channels on a quiet Sunday afternoon, I have nothing particular in mind that I would like to watch. I spend no more than a few minutes on each station, yet I am already beginning to notice a pattern in the way women are portrayed. I see a popular female vocalist dancing provocatively wearing almost nothing on one channel, while on the next, it is a one-joke movie patronizing an overweight girl. ... Any girl who watches TV or listens to the radio is bombarded not only with negative stereotypes of females, but also with the message that the most important qualities to possess are physical and aesthetic. From where, then, are girls supposed to derive positive role models? I began asking myself this question two years ago as an eighth grader at Tenafly Middle School in Tenafly, NJ, when I participated in R.O.G.A.T.E., or Resources Offered for Gifted and Talented Education.
Mentoring Relationships And Gifted Learners - by Sandra L. Berger
The idea of mentoring is as old as mankind. Ancient Greece introduced the concept, and it was institutionalized during the Middle Ages. Internships and apprenticeships are valuable because they allow students to learn new skills and investigate potential career interests. A mentorship, on the other hand, is a dynamic shared relationship in which values, attitudes, passions, and traditions are passed from one person to another and internalized. Its purpose is to transform lives.Gifted Women: Identity and Expression by Douglas Eby
Warrior Women On Screen by Douglas Eby
----books:
Gil Adamson, Gillian Anderson, Dawn Connolly Mulder, It's Me: The Gillian Anderson Files
[reader:] "This is the best Gillian Anderson biography on shelves today. But this isn't just a biography, this book also includes television and radio interviews with answers to some of the most frequently asked questions. You get to find out what people did when Gillian Anderson appeared at the X-Files convention and what questions her fans asked. It also includes the speech she made in Washington D.C. for public awareness about Neurofibromatosis, the disease her younger brother has been diagnosed with. This book also includes great Gillian Anderson Internet sources and an X-File episode guide."Drew Barrymore [autobiography]. Little Girl Lost
Jeanine Basinger How Hollywood Spoke to Women, 1930-1960
"Basinger shows how the "woman's film" of the 30s, 40s, and 50s sent a potent mixed message to millions of female moviegoers. At the same time that such films exhorted women to stick to their "proper" realm of men, marriage, and motherhood, they portrayed -- usually with relish -- strong women playing out liberating fantasies of power, romance, sexuality, luxury, even wickedness. ... Basinger examines dozens of films.. to make a persuasive case that the woman's film was a rich, complicated, and subversive genre that recognized and addressed.. problems of women."Dorothy Cantor and Toni Bernay. Women in Power: The Secrets of Leadership
Ken Carbone. The Virtuoso : Face to Face With 40 Extraordinary Talents
"They all have these kind of old-fashioned virtues -- extremely determined, very courageous, patient, disciplined... they have this scary sense of authenticity. There is absolutely nothing that separates the person from what they do. They are the real thing. There is no spin here. .. there is a respectable level of will, where nothing stands in their way. They're never satisfied. Here, you're talking about people that do it better than anyone in the world, but it's always about this next thing and how they're going to do it better. .. they had this sense of generosity. They all felt that they were given these gifts to share with others."Nancy Carson. Believing In Ourselves: A Celebration Of Women
"Every woman will encounter loss, grief, and profound difficulty. But happiness, achievement, and success are in front of us as well," writes editor Nancy Carson in Believing in Ourselves... Carson introduces 35 North American women who, in various ways, have triumphed over obstacles. Susan Edwards-Bell overcame cancer and is now an advocate for the homeless. Sonia Sotomayor grew up in a Bronx housing project and was the first Latina named to the U.S. Court of Appeals. Mary-Lisa Orth lived on welfare during her struggle to become a top industrial engineer." [Publishers Weekly review]Dawn Chipman, Pamela Nelson. Cool Women
"The roster of female role models in Cool Women is extremely eclectic, spanning history and national boundaries to include Cleopatra and Amelia Earhart. Mexican freedom fighters stand side by side with Soviet WWII fighter pilots, Mother Jones, and Rosie the Riveter. Editor Pam Nelson places emphasis on women who overcame their own fears to go beyond society's expectations and succeed on their own terms. Cool Women also introduces many young readers to women about whom they might otherwise not learn until adulthood, such as Dorothy Parker, Janet Flanner, and Jane Goodall."Mihaly Csikszentmihaly. Creativity : Flow and the Psychology of Discovery and Invention
[publisher:] "Professor Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi interviewed more than ninety of possibly the most interesting people in the world -- people like actor Ed Asner, authors Robertson Davies and Nadine Gordimer.."Liz Curtis Higgs Really Bad Girls of the Bible : More Lessons from Less-Than-Perfect-Women
"...Liz reveals the power of God's sovereignty in the lives of other shady ladies we know by reputation but have rarely studied in depth: Bathsheba, the bathing beauty. Jael, the tent-peg-toting warrior princess. Herodias, the horrible beheader. Tamar, the widow and not-so-timid temptress. Athaliah, the deadly daughter of Jezebel. And three ancient women whose names we do not know but who have much to teach us: the ashamed Adulteress, the bewitching Medium of En Dor, and the desperate Bleeding Woman." [Amazon.com review]James Hillman Kinds of Power
"A charismatic person is one blessed with grace given by the Gods...Charisma may fall on anyone, even on those in whom the ability to lead and to bear authority are woefully absent, thereby deceiving followers who cannot distinguish mastery from magic"John Kobal. Movie-Star Portraits of the Forties
Kathleen Noble , PhD. Remarkable Women - Perspectives on Female Talent Development
Howard Schatz, Beverly J. Ornstein Gifted Woman
[reader:] "This book raises awareness of the impact that women have made on our society. These black & white portraits are so well-crafted, they often need no words to describe the subjects. Short texts do accompany the photographs. Especially appropriate for young women exploring their life possibilities. Provides inspiration by showing real women who have made a difference in every area of modern life."
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related pages:---role models: page 1........-leadership------self-esteem / self concept*interviews:----Jodie Foster----Kathleen Noble, Ph.D. ----
more role models:-books: biographies
videos from the Lifetime cable series "Intimate Portraits :
Anjelica Huston ---- Lauren Hutton ----Jane Seymour ---- Gloria Steinemmore suggested role models and gifted characters in film/tv: videos
more**articles.........articles: giftedness...........articles.: mental health.........articles.: teen / young adult
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