By Lori Acken, ReMIND Magazine
Who do you think of when you think “wonder woman”? Could she be Lynda Carter’s ’70s-TV superhero, a role that transformed a former Miss World USA into an Amazonian princess? Maybe instead there are real-life wonder women, who used their celebrity and its trappings to do good in the world. Here we spotlight some inspiring ladies whose lives and legacies have positively, genuinely impacted the world.
“I don’t go by the rule book, I lead from the heart, not the head,” our cover girl Diana, Princess of Wales once said. “Carry out a random act of kindness, with no expectation of reward, safe in the knowledge that one day someone might do the same for you.”
Diana, Princess of Wales
Shy, sporty and empathetic from childhood, Diana wasn’t just “the people’s princess” — she was every person’s princess, including the AIDS and leprosy patients whose hands she shook, the land-mine victims in whose steps she fearlessly walked and the homeless Londoners she championed and chatted up like chums. For young Diana Spencer, becoming a royal didn’t mean donning a crown and settling into a life of high-profile privilege. Instead, the soft-spoken beauty filled her days with charitable causes around the globe — not because it was expected of her, but because it fulfilled her. Supporting more than 100 charities before her tragic death (and after, via the Diana, Princess of Wales Memorial Fund), Diana passed on her fervor for doing good to sons Harry and William, who carry on her legacy via the Royal Foundation of the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge and Prince Harry. Perhaps her most enduring legacy is demonstrating to a generation of little girls that acting like a princess could be so much more than gowns, crowns and waiting for a prince.
Loretta Lynn
One of the bravest and earliest voices in entertainment’s feminist movement came from a coal miner’s daughter who married at 15 and was the mother of four by her 20th birthday. In 1953, Loretta Webb Lynn’s husband Oliver (better known as Doolittle) gave his bride a $17 guitar — and plenty to sing about. Crafting song after song, Lynn became an outspoken champion of the wronged woman. Songs about female sexuality, suppression and liberation were shunned by some radio stations but became hits anyway. Lynn addressed the Vietnam War with “Dear Uncle Sam,” a song she penned to give voice to widows of the unpopular war. In 2004, Lynn teamed up with alt-rocker Jack White on the critically acclaimed, deeply personal Van Lear Rose, which introduced her to both a new generation and a new genre of music fans. But through it all, Lynn declared herself an observer, a chronicler of the human condition rather an outright activist.
Liz Taylor
Hollywood royalty from the moment she hit the screen in National Velvet, Elizabeth Taylor was the violet-eyed beauty who wowed filmgoers, and scandalized the public with eight marriages to seven different husbands. But when she passed away in 2011, Taylor was equally remembered as a tireless AIDS activist, a mission to which she was devoted for more than 30 years, raising millions of dollars and bolstering international awareness of the dangers of denying the epidemic. Infuriated, but driven by the inaction of politicians and the medical community, Taylor lent her name, her time and her knack for persuasion to AIDS research and its earliest victims, first raising funds for AIDS Project Los Angeles and then helping to launch amfAR, The Foundation for AIDS Research. The disease hit home for Taylor, as well, claiming her close friend and Giant costar Rock Hudson in 1985. Then, Taylor learned her beloved daughter-in-law, the heiress Aileen Getty, contracted the disease a year earlier. Getty survives, following Taylor into fundraising for the same cause.
Sally Field
It’s awfully hard not to like Sally Field. The girl-next-door actress dated sex symbol Burt Reynolds, earned an Oscar for her brave performance as union organizer Norma Rae, and landed Playboy‘s cover without taking off a stitch of her clothes inside. And the diminutive actress is equally courageous offstage. Scoring the 2007 Emmy for Outstanding Lead Actress for her role in Brothers & Sisters, Field offered a fiery acceptance speech that opined, “If the mothers ruled the world, there would be no goddamn wars in the first place.” Though the press made sure her words reached the public, the statement was censored by FOX. Outside of the spotlight, Field champions women’s rights around the world, serving on the board of Vital Voices, a nonprofit supporting female leaders, since 2002. Mother to openly gay son Sam, Field is also a vocal advocate for LGBTQ rights.
Shirley Temple Black
When you’re a world-famous movie star by age 5, a married mom at 20, and written off by the industry that loved you best as a ringleted, oh-so-marketable dancing cherub soon after, it’s hard to imagine what the next chapter might be. For Shirley Temple Black, the answer came via another global stage. After a failed run for Congress in 1967, Black channeled her efforts into fundraising for the Republican party. By 1969, she was part of the U.S. delegation to the United Nations, and in 1974 she was appointed ambassador to Ghana. Two years later, she became chief of protocol of the United States and then served her final ambassadorship in Czechoslovakia from 1989-92. Beyond her civil service, Black served as an early public face for breast cancer patients, discussing her own mastectomy and encouraging women not to “sit home and be afraid” to undergo mammograms.
Barbra Streisand
An Oscar winner with a penchant for playing ballsy dames and supporting them, too, Barbra Streisand uses her eponymous foundation to channel funding and support to a variety of women-centric causes in the arenas of health, education and reproductive rights. Streisand is also an avid environmentalist. But her contribution to a generation of aspiring actresses and unconventional beauties was far more personal. “I arrived in Hollywood without having my nose fixed, my teeth capped or my name changed,” Streisand said. “That is very gratifying to me.”
Nina Simone
Eunice Waymon dreamed of being the first black classical pianist and playing Bach at Carnegie Hall. But when she performed at the venue years later, she did so as Nina Simone, the genre-defying High Priestess of Soul who belted out the explosive “Mississippi Goddam” to white audiences. “I stopped singing love songs and started singing protest songs because protest songs were needed,” Simone explained. Unlike the uplifting anthems of the era, her music captured the racial anger that most popular artists were afraid to express. Simone received a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award last year — 14 years after her death.
Oprah Winfrey
Her 2018 Golden Globes speech left little doubt that Oprah Winfrey could rule the world. In the meantime, though, Winfrey’s been busy saving it. The Tennessee-raised tough cookie parlayed a troubled, impoverished youth into an iron-clad empathy and drive to succeed, earning her own talk show in 1986 and quickly becoming America’s female Phil Donahue. Displaying Donahue’s devotion to the human condition, but outpacing him in warmth and everyman curiosity, Winfrey began building an empire. And as her bank account grew, so did her need to do good. Retiring her talk show in 2011, Winfrey devoted herself to worthwhile projects and causes aiding the African-American community and beyond. By 2012, Winfrey had given $400 million to educational causes alone, including the Oprah Winfrey Leadership Academy for Girls in South Africa, a leadership school for impoverished but promising girls that she founded after a chat with Nelson Mandela.
Audrey Hepburn
Another brainy beauty who nursed mixed feelings about her fame, the Breakfast at Tiffany’s actress and enduring style icon left show business in her 30s to devote herself first to her young family and then to the children’s charity UNICEF. But unlike the privileged Liz Taylor, Audrey Hepburn’s philanthropy was born of her own childhood experiences, when her Holland-based family relied on UNICEF and other charities to survive during the Nazi invasions of World War II. Though her pixie-like beauty and charm are legendary, Hepburn displayed an uncommon might, traveling the globe to provide comfort and aid to starving children and raising awareness for the UNICEF mission. But the trappings of her fame continue her legacy, even after her 1993 death from cancer. In 2006, the iconic floor-length black silk dress she wore in Tiffany’s scored $807,000 for City of Joy Aid, which supports impoverished children in India.
Katharine Hepburn
Born to a prominent doctor and a fervent feminist and suffragette, Katharine Hepburn was raised to be an unapologetic free thinker. The patrician beauty fearlessly managed her Hollywood career, buying out her RKO Radio Pictures contract after a series of failed films and signing on with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, where she was partnered with Spencer Tracy to great on- and offscreen success. Refusing to play the ingénue worked in her favor, earning her 12 Oscar nominations. When she wasn’t working, Hepburn stayed steadfast to her independent nature, preferring casual menswear-inspired attire and maintaining a discreet, 26-year offscreen relationship with the unhappily married Tracy. And though she refused to conform to Hollywood norms rewarding youth, beauty and a very public persona, Hepburn never lost the public’s support. The icon died at age 96 in 2003, but her motto has inspired generations of women: “If you obey all the rules, you miss all the fun.”
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