MY TOP 5 INSPIRATIONAL WOMEN OF THE LAST CENTURY
Last week was 108th International Women's Day which commemorates the movement for women's rights. It is a chance the celebrate women across the world (and throughout history). In honour of this year's International Women's Day I want to list my top 5 inspirational women of the past century*.
* This is just my opinion.
#5 - Anne Frank
"I keep my ideals, because in spite of everything I still believe that people are really good at heart." |
| Anne writing in her diary |
Anne was born into a German-Jewish family but when Hitler and the Nazi party came into power in 1933 the family moved to Amsterdam like three thousand Jews between 1933 and 1939. She is known for keeping a diary documenting the Nazi Occupation of Holland from 1942 to 1944 when her family were in hiding from Hitler and the Nazis who were persecuting Jews. When she left Germany she lost her citizenship and fundamentally became stateless.
She was incredibly clever and brave and an exceptional writer. On her thirteenth birthday she was given a book/diary to write in. She decided to write down all her intimate thoughts down in a diary that to this day inspired millions. In 1944, she decided that when the War was over she would go back to school and train how to become a teacher and travel to Paris and London.
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| Anne's beloved diary, which was saved by helper Miep Gies and returned to Anne's father Otto after the war. |
Anne survived Auschwitz with her older sister (her mother had died of starvation) only to be sent to the Bergen-Belsen. Both sisters died there of typhus shortly before the camp was liberated by the British Army on 15th April 1945.
Anne wasn't an activist or anyone of great importance but she was a person who tried to see the best in people in a world that was dark. She was a young girl who was taken too young. Her bravery during the war has to be acknowledged. Her story is heartbreaking but tells us the truth of the holocaust. Her diary has been read my millions all across the world and the house she spent hiding away is now a museum and is dedicated to her memory.
"It’s a wonder I haven’t abandoned all my ideals, they seem so absurd and impractical. Yet I cling to them because I still believe, in spite of everything, that people are truly good at heart.
It’s utterly impossible for me to build my life on a foundation of chaos, suffering and death. I see the world being slowly transformed into a wilderness, I hear the approaching thunder that, one day, will destroy us too, I feel the suffering of millions. And yet, when I look up at the sky, I somehow feel that everything will change for the better, that this cruelty too shall end, that peace and tranquility will return once more" - July 15, 1944
#4 - Jackie Kennedy Onassis
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| Jackie as a young girl |
Jackie was born into a high New York socialite family in July 1929. Her a father was Wall Street stockbroker. She was incredibly clever but would get in trouble now and again with her teachers. As a child she took ballet and horse riding (something she carried on throughout her adult life).
In 1947, she attended Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, New York. She didn't like the college and would travel back to New York City at the weekends and even spent her junior year (1949–1950) in France – at the University of Grenoble in Grenoble, and at the Sorbonne in Paris – in a study-abroad program through Smith College. When she returned to the States she transferred to The George Washington University in Washington, D.C., graduating with a Bachelor of Arts degree in French literature in 1951.
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| Jackie and John on their wedding day in 1953 |
Jackie suffered a miscarriage in 1955 and in August 1956 gave birth to a stillborn daughter, Arabella before gave birth to a daughter, Caroline, on November 27, 1957, via Caesarean section. Then two weeks after Kennedy's presidential victory 1961 Jackie gave birth to the couple's first son, John F. Kennedy, Jr., via Caesarean section.
Jackie came the third youngest First Lady in American history. She was the first First Lady to hire a press secretary, Pamela Turnure, and carefully managed her contact with the media, usually shying away from making public statements, and strictly controlling the extent to which her children were photographed. Something that has been carried down the years.
Although Jacqueline stated that her priority as a First Lady was to take care of the President and their children, she also dedicated her time to the promotion of American arts and history. Her main contribution was the restoration of the White House, but she also furthered the cause by hosting social events bringing together elite figures from politics and the arts in order to raise funds and not use the tax payers money.
JFK was known for having affairs behind his wife's back (remember Marilyn Monroe). Most women would have divorced him (or even killed him) but Jackie stayed with him regardless. Why? There are three reasons that I can think of. 1) money and it would look bad for the family/JFK's reelection campaign, 2) she was thinking about the wellbeing of her children or 3) she really loved him. I hope it was 3.
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| Jackie with John and their children Caroline and JFK Jr |
After the death Robert Kennedy (JFK's brother) she reportedly suffered a relapse of the depression she had experienced in the days following JFK's assassination nearly five years prior. She came to fear for her life and those of her children, saying: "If they're killing Kennedys, then my children are targets ... I want to get out of this country".
In October 1968, she married Aristotle Onassis, a wealthy Greek shipping magnate who was able to provide the privacy and security she sought for herself and her children. Aristotle was divorced but his ex-wife was still living which led to speculation that Jackie might be excommunicated by the Roman Catholic Church. She was condemned as a "public sinner," and became the target of paparazzi who followed her everywhere and nicknamed her "Jackie O".
| Jackie Kennedy |
In 1993 she was diagnosed with cancer and by March 1994 the cancer had spread to her spinal cord and brain, and by May to her liver. She died on 19th May in New York City in her sleep. She was buried alongside JFK, their son Patrick, and their stillborn daughter Arabella. President Bill Clinton delivered a eulogy at her graveside service. Her estate that was valued at $43.7 million.
Jackie remains one of the most popular First Ladies of the United States and was an inspiration to the millions of Americans and people around the world.
"You have to be doing something you enjoy. That is a definition of happiness: Complete use of one's faculties along lines leading to excellence in a life affording them scope. It applies to women as well as to men. We can't all reach it, but we can try to reach it to some degree." - Jackie Kennedy
#3 - Rosa Parks
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| Rosa Parks |
Rosa was born in February 1913 in Alabama (the Deep South). Growing up in Alabama she faced discrimination and racist just because of the colour of her skin. The Klu Klux Klan believed that whites were the superior to black people and treated them like dirt. Segregation was part of everyday life in the South and blacks and whites did not mix. They lived apart. They drank from different taps. They had separate toilets. It was like being back in the dark ages but life was better in the northern states then in the south.
As part of my GCSE History in high school I had to learn about the civil rights movement. I remember my history teacher showing the class Mississippi Burning (1988) and is loosely based on the FBI's investigation into the murders of three civil rights workers in Mississippi in 1964. I was only 14/15 at the time but I remember watching it and crying my eyes. It is so emotional and heartbreaking. I do suggest that you watch it.
But back to Rosa.
On December 1, 1955, in Montgomery, Alabama, Park was on a bus when driver James F. Blake's order to give up her seat in the "coloured" section to a white passenger when there was no where for the passenger to sit. She refused to move and was arrested for breaking the law.
When she was released from prison she organised a boycott where other blacks refused to use the buses as a sign of protest. They would share car rides or walk. This became an important symbol of the Civil Rights Movement and became a symbol of resistance to racial segregation. She organised and collaborated with civil rights leaders, including Edgar Nixon and Martin Luther King, Jr. The case was taken to court and the result was a ban of segregation on buses.
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| President Barack Obama unveiled a statue of Rosa Parks 2013 |
"I have never been what you would call just an integrationist. I know I've been called that... Integrating that bus wouldn't mean more equality. Even when there was segregation, there was plenty of integration in the South, but it was for the benefit and convenience of the white person, not us." - Rosa Parks
#3 - Princess Diana
When Lady Diana Spencer married Prince Charles in 1981 she could have put her feet up and relax but instead she dedicated her life to helping others. Diana had a big heart and was loved not only by her family but by the English public. |
| Diana as a young girl |
As part of a wealthy family Diana received the best education available. She started her education under the supervision of her governess, Gertrude Allen, learning skills a young lady of her status would need. She began her formal education at Silfield Private School in Gayton, Norfolk, and moved to Riddlesworth Hall School, an all-girls boarding school when she was nine and joined her older sisters at West Heath Girls' School in Sevenoaks, Kent, in 1973. She did not shine academically, failing her O-levels twice but her outstanding community spirit was recognised with an award from the school. She showed a talent for music as an accomplished pianist and excelled in swimming and diving, and studied ballet and tap dance. She attended Institut Alpin Videmanette, a finishing school in Rougemont, Switzerland, for one term in 1978.
Diana first met Charles in November 1977 when he was dating her sister, Lady Sarah, which might have been a bit awkward at family events. Charles took a serious interest in Diane as a potential bride during the summer of 1980, when they were guests at a country weekend, and she watched him play polo. The relationship developed as he invited her for a sailing weekend to Cowes aboard the royal yacht. Diane was then initiated to Balmoral (the Royal Family's Scottish residence) to meet the Queen and other members of the family in November 1980. She was well received by the Queen, the Duke of Edinburgh, and Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother. The couple courted in London and Charles proposed on 6 February 1981.
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| Diana and HRH Charles Prince of Wales on their wedding day |
Diana became Princess of Wales when she married the Prince of Wales on 29 July 1981 at St Paul's Cathedral, which used for royal nuptials rather then Westminster Abbey due to seating and was described as a "fairytale wedding", and was watched by 750 million while 600,000 people lined the streets to catch a glimpse of the couple.
Diane gave birth to Prince William Arthur Philip Louis in 1982 and while he was still a baby she took him on her first major tours of Australia and New Zealand. PrinceHenry Charles Albert David (or Prince Harry as the world knows him), was born in September 1984. Her sons had wider experiences than was usual for royal children. Diane was involved in her son's upbringing choosing their first given names, selecting a nanny, picking their schools and clothing, planning their outings, and took them to school herself as often as her schedule permitted and organised her public duties around their timetables.
In December 1995, Diane and Charles separated under the "orders" of the Queen. In August 1996 the couple divorced. Diana received a lump sum settlement of £17 million as well as £400,000 per year. The couple signed a confidentiality agreement that prohibited them from discussing the details of the divorce or of their married life. She kept using the title Princess of Wales.
During her time as a Princess she developed an intense interest in serious illnesses and health-related matters outside the purview of traditional royal involvement, including AIDS and leprosy. and campaigned for animal protection and her fight against the use of landmines. She was the patroness of charities and organisations working with the homeless, youth, drug addicts, and the elderly. From 1989, she was president of Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children. The list goes on and on.
On 31 August 1997, Diana was killed in a car crash in Paris and along her companion Dodi Fayed and the driver, Henri Paul. The funeral was watched by 32.10 million people in the U.K., while millions more watched the event around the world.
An investigation was undertook by the French authorities and it came to the conclusion that the accident was caused by the driver. In February 1998, Mohamed Al-Fayed, owner of the Paris Ritz where Paul had worked, publicly maintained that the crash had been planned and accused MI6 and the Duke of Edinburgh. An inquest in London (2004 - 2008) showed that it was an accident caused by negligent driving and pursuing paparazzi. In April 2008, a jury returned the verdict of "unlawful killing".
Diana remains to this day one of the most popular Royal in history and still continues to influence the principles of the Royal Family and its young generation. She was a major presence on the world stage, often described as the "world's most photographed woman" and was noted for her compassion, style, charisma, and high-profile charity work.
Eugene Robinson of The Washington Post wrote in his article that "Diana imbued her role as royal princess with vitality, activism and, above all, glamour" while Alicia Carroll of The New York Times described Diana as "a breath of fresh air" who was the main factor that made the Royal Family known in the United States. Tony Blair, who was Prime Minister at the time of her death, said that Diana had shown the nation "a new way to be British" and called her the "People's Princess," an iconic national figure.
Her brother, the Earl Spencer, said:
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| William, Diana and Harry |
Diane was an inspiration for everyone. She cared about everyone and used her position as a member of the royal family to help others not only in the U.K. but also abroad, mostly in Africa. Her legacy lives on through her sons: William and Harry who continue her work.
"I think the biggest disease the world suffers from in this day and age is the disease of people feeling unloved. I know that I can give love for a minute, for half an hour, for a day, for a month, but I can give. I am very happy to do that, I want to do that." - Diana Spencer, Princess of Wales
Now it is time for #1. This person is a real inspiration and I am a big fan of her work. She is my favourite actress of all time. The top place goes to.......
#1 - Audrey Hepburn
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| A young Audrey Hepburn |
But Audrey wasn't just a incredibly talented actress. She was an activist and humanitarian and her life was incredible as if it were a film script. She was only on this earth for 63 years but she did more living then most people could do in a century.
When you hear Audrey in any of her films you automatically think she is English due to her accent (which I love) but she was from Belgium. She was born on the 4th May 1929 to Joseph Victor Anthony Ruston (a British subject who was born in Austria-Hungary) and Ella van Heemstra (a Dutch baroness). Her parents divorced in 1938.
Audrey moved to England in 1937 with her mother and attended boarding school (which resulted in her perfect English and gorgeous accent). She could speak five languages: Dutch and English, and later French, Spanish, and Italian.
During World War II she was with her mother in The Netherlands. When the Nazis invaded Holland, Audrey and her mother struggled to survive. She helped with the resistance movement by delivering messages in her shoes. She was a young girl/teenager during this time but she would perform ballet for audiences who were afraid to applaud because they didn't want the Nazis to catch them. She gave the money she earned to the Resistance. During the War food was limited and the majority of the time people went hungry. She would make bread using grass because wheat and flour was in short supply and even eat the heads of tulips. Audrey became so thin and became extremely ill (she narrowly escaped death) and this effected her dancing career.
Her father, who she hadn't seen since she was nine, was investigated by the British House of Commons during the war for receiving seed money to start a newspaper from Germans and having connections to Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels. He was imprisoned as an enemy of the state for the duration of the war. Both of Audrey's parents were Nazi sympathisers.
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| Audrey as Gigi |
It wasn't until 1952 did she get her big break when she was offered a small role in a film being shot in both English and French in Monte Carlo Baby which was filmed in Monte Carlo. French novelist Colette was at the Hôtel de Paris where she saw Audrey for the first time, and decided to cast her in the title role of Gigi. When Gigi opened at the Fulton Theatre on 24 November 1951, she received praise for her performance, despite criticism that the stage version was inferior to the French filmatisation. She was called by the publication Life as a "hit", while The New York Times stated that "her quality is so winning and so right that she is the success of the evening" and also received a Theatre World Award.
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| In Roman Holiday with Gregory Peck |
It was a box office success, and Hepburn gained critical acclaim for her portrayal, winning an Academy Award for Best Actress, a BAFTA Award for Best British Actress in a Leading Role, and a Golden Globe Award for Best Actress – Motion Picture Drama. The New York Times review of the film said "Although she is not precisely a newcomer to films Audrey Hepburn, the British actress who is being starred for the first time as Princess Anne, is a slender, elfin and wistful beauty, alternately regal and childlike in her profound appreciation of newly-found, simple pleasures and love. Although she bravely smiles her acknowledgement of the end of that affair, she remains a pitifully lonely figure facing a stuffy future."
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| Audrey and Mel on their wedding day in 1954 |
She then went on to date American actor Mel Ferrer, who wanted a family as as she did. It was a match made in heaven. The studio was concerned that the tabloids might reveal the affair and to quash rumours, they forced Hepburn and Ferrer to announce publicly their engagement at Holden's house in the presence of both him and his wife making it one of the most spectacularly awkward party ever in Hollywood history. Audrey and Ferrer were married on 25 September 1954 in Switzerland.
Hepburn had two miscarriages, one in March 1955 and another in 1959, after she fell from a horse during the filming of The Unforgiven (1960). When she became pregnant for the third time, she took a year off work to prevent miscarriage and their son, Sean Hepburn Ferrer, was born on 17 July 1960. She had two more miscarriages in 1965 and 1967.
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| The ICONIC dress worn in the opening scene of Breakfast At Tiffany's (1961) |
She played Sister Luke in The Nun's Story (1959), in which she received an third Academy Award nomination and earnt her a second BAFTA Award. Her performance of Sister Luke is one of the great performances of the screen and she spent hours in convents and with members of the Church to bring truth to her portrayal, stating that she "gave more time, energy and thought to this than to any of my previous screen performances."
For me personally, Audrey Hepburn will always be remembered for her role in the 1961 adaptation of Breakfast At Tiffany's where she played New York call girl Holly Golightly. The author of the book have preferred for Marilyn Monroe to have been cast in the role, although he also stated that Hepburn "did a terrific job". The character is considered one of the most iconic in American cinema, and a defining role for Hepburn. The dress she wears during the opening credits is considered an icon of the twentieth century and perhaps the most famous "little black dress" of all time. Everyone in the world regardless of their age has seen the iconic black dress featured at the beginning of the film. I always dream of wearing that dress and creating that iconic scene. Audrey said that the role was "the jazziest of my career... I'm an introvert. Playing the extroverted girl was the hardest thing I ever did." She was nominated for another Academy Award for Best Actress for her performance.
I'm 1967, Audrey chose to devote more time to her family and acted only occasionally in the following decades. She met her Italian psychiatrist Andrea Dotti, on a Mediterranean cruise with friends in June 1968. She wanted to have more children and they married on 18th January 1969; and their son, Luca Dotti, was born the following year. While pregnant with Luca she was more careful, resting for months before having a caesarean section. She suffered another miscarriage in 1974. Dotti was unfaithful and they divorced in 1982, when she felt Luca and Sean were old enough to handle life with a single mother.
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| Audrey with baby Sean (left)in 1960 and baby Luca (right) in 1970 |
Her first field mission for UNICEF was to Ethiopia in 1988 where she visited an orphanage in Mek'ele that housed 500 starving children and had UNICEF send food. Of the trip, she said,
"I have a broken heart. I feel desperate. I can't stand the idea that two million people are in imminent danger of starving to death, many of them children, [and] not because there isn't tons of food sitting in the northern port of Shoa. It can't be distributed. Last spring, Red Cross and UNICEF workers were ordered out of the northern provinces because of two simultaneous civil wars... I went into rebel country and saw mothers and their children who had walked for ten days, even three weeks, looking for food, settling onto the desert floor into makeshift camps where they may die. Horrible. That image is too much for me. The 'Third World' is a term I don't like very much, because we're all one world. I want people to know that the largest part of humanity is suffering."
In August 1988 Hepburn went to Turkey on an immunisation campaign. She called Turkey "the loveliest example" of UNICEF's capabilities. Of the trip, she said "the army gave us their trucks, the fishmongers gave their wagons for the vaccines, and once the date was set, it took ten days to vaccinate the whole country. Not bad." In October, Hepburn went to South America. Of her experiences in Venezuela and Ecuador, Hepburn told the United States Congress, "I saw tiny mountain communities, slums, and shantytowns receive water systems for the first time by some miracle – and the miracle is UNICEF. I watched boys build their own schoolhouse with bricks and cement provided by UNICEF."
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| Audrey as an ambassador for UNICEF |
John Isaac, a UN photographer, said, "often the kids would have flies all over them, but she would just go hug them. I had never seen that. Other people had a certain amount of hesitation, but she would just grab them. Children would just come up to hold her hand, touch her – she was like the Pied Piper."
She traveled to Vietnam, in an effort to collaborate with the government for national UNICEF-supported immunisation and clean water programmes as well as to Somalia. Calling it "apocalyptic", she said, "I walked into a nightmare. I have seen famine in Ethiopia and Bangladesh, but I have seen nothing like this – so much worse than I could possibly have imagined. I wasn't prepared for this. The earth is red – an extraordinary sight – that deep terracotta red. And you see the villages, displacement camps and compounds, and the earth is all rippled around these places like an ocean bed and I was told these were the graves. There are graves everywhere. Along the road, wherever there is a road, around the paths that you take, along the riverbeds, near every camp – there are graves everywhere.... Taking care of children has nothing to do with politics. I think perhaps with time, instead of there being a politicisation of humanitarian aid, there will be a humanisation of politics... Anyone who doesn't believe in miracles is not a realist. I have seen the miracle of water which UNICEF has helped to make a reality. Where for centuries young girls and women had to walk for miles to get water, now they have clean drinking water near their homes. Water is life, and clean water now means health for the children of this village. People in these places don't know Audrey Hepburn, but they recognise the name UNICEF. When they see UNICEF their faces light up, because they know that something is happening. In the Sudan, for example, they call a water pump UNICEF."
From 1980 until her death, she was in a relationship with Dutch actor Robert Wolders, who she met in the later years of her second marriage. In 1989, she called the nine years she had spent with him the happiest years of her life, and stated that she considered them married, just not officially.
In September 1992 Hepburn began suffering from abdominal pain and results showed it was an abdominal cancer and had grown slowly over several years. She underwent surgery before beginning chemotherapy and then Further surgery showed that the cancer had spread too far to be operable and that it was in its terminal stages.
Hepburn and her family returned home to Switzerland to celebrate her last Christmas and was still recovering from surgery, she was unable to fly on an commercial aircraft. Her longtime friend, fashion designer Hubert de Givenchy, who had designed her clothes for her films such as Breakfast At Tiffany's and Paris When It Sizzles, arranged for socialite Rachel Lambert "Bunny" Mellon to send her the private Gulfstream jet, filled with flowers, to take Hepburn from Los Angeles to Geneva. She spent her last days in hospice care at her home in Tolochenaz and was occasionally well enough to take walks in her garden, but gradually became more confined to bedrest.
| Audrey's grave |
In January 1993, she died in her sleep at home. After her death, Gregory Peck went on camera and tearfully recited her favourite poem, "Unending Love" by Rabindranath Tagore. Funeral services were held at the village church of Tolochenaz and Maurice Eindiguer, who had married her to Ferrer and baptised Sean, presided over her funeral, while Prince Sadruddin Aga Khan of UNICEF delivered a eulogy. Many family members and friends attended the funeral, including her half-brother Ian, ex-husbands Andrea Dotti and Mel Ferrer, Givenchy, executives of UNICEF, and fellow actors Alain Delon and Roger Moore. Flower arrangements were sent to the funeral by Gregory Peck, Elizabeth Taylor, and the Dutch royal family. Audrey was clearly loved deeply and made a big impact on everyone she met. She was laid to rest at the Tolochenaz Cemetery.
Facts People Don't Know About Audrey
- Audrey Hepburn sang 'Happy Birthday' to JFK the year after Marilyn Monroe did.
- When JFK was still an unmarried senator, he dated Hepburn. It wasn't scandalous nor serious.
- Audrey Hepburn is one of the 14 people who have managed win an Emmy, a Grammy, an Oscar and a Tony Award.
- Walt Disney Prevented Hepburn from Starring in a Live-Action Film of Peter Pan
A Tulip Breed Was Named After her “as a tribute to the actress’s career and her longtime work on behalf of UNICEF.
"How shall I sum up my life?
I think I've been particularly lucky."
- Hepburn, c. 1956
How do you sum up the life of someone like Audrey Hepburn in one word. If I had to sum up her up in just one word it would be 'remarkable'. She was definitely one in a million. She is a complete inspiration for me and others. There will probably never be another person like her.
That's my list of inspirational women in the past century. Who would be in your list? Comment below. I'd loved to hear who you would have in yours..
