2008 Women of the Year honoree Hillary Clinton spent much of midterms season campaigning for Democrats running for Congress, including Florida politician Donna Shalala and Chicago gubernatorial candidate J.B. Prtizker. So it’s really no wonder she surprised the crowd at Glamour‘s Women of the Year awards for an inspiring speech on the importance of women running for office.
Read the powerful message she delivered to the crowd, below:
“Congratulations to all of the Glamour Women of the Year being honored tonight—don’t they inspire us and give us hope about the future?
“This week, exactly two years ago, was a rough one. But, you know, my personal disappointment wasn’t so much about what happened, but how do we create even more opportunity for all the people in America. ‘An America that’s hopeful, inclusive and big-hearted,’ as I said afterward. That remains my mission today.
Maybe we didn’t crack that highest, hardest ceiling, but we did charge straight through the wall and into the arena.
“In that same speech, I told little girls that they deserved every chance and opportunity to pursue their own dreams. But I didn’t realize how many women were listening as well. And many of those women decided that they were going to get involved in politics, including running for public office. Maybe we didn’t crack that highest, hardest ceiling, but we did charge straight through the wall and into the arena.
“In 2018, women brushed themselves off and ran in record-breaking numbers: Just think, 233 for Congress, 16 for governor, and more than 3,300 for seats in state legislatures. And what was so great was that these women came from a variety of backgrounds, from military veterans to teachers to bartenders to small business owners. They ran grassroots campaigns, many of them as first-time-ever candidates, and each of them fought for the priorities of their local communities: seeking fully funded public education, justice system reform, environmental protection, an unprejudiced immigration system, economic equality, and so much more.
“From lifetime politicos to first-time candidates, busy, busy, people, busy executives and busy moms, women facing men and women facing each other, women went all in. Win or lose, their races really, energized us, and encouraged even more Americans of all kinds to run for public office, to get civically involved.
To those of you who think it’s impossible to make possible, we have lots of examples from last week that now we just have to try.
“Think about this the winners included a number of firsts: Debra Haaland and Sharice Davids, the first Native American women elected to Congress. Right? And what about Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar, the first Muslim women ever elected to Congress; Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the youngest woman ever elected to Congress; and Lucy McBath, a woman who I got to know well in the 2016 campaign who turned her grief of losing her son to gun violence to a movement to commons sense gun reform. She helped turn mourning into a movement, then she won a seat once held by Newt Gingrich. To those of you who think it’s impossible to make possible we have lots of examples from last week that now we just have to try. Just before I came on, I heard that the race in Arizona was called for Kyrsten Sinema.
“Can we please offer some thunderous applause for them, and for all of the women who ran this year? And for the women who will follow their lead and run for office in 2020…maybe some of them are in this room tonight. I hope that you are. Because we need you. We need you so much. I think people got a burst of energy from the victories from last week. I will be sure to continue to encourage a lot of you and encourage particularly young women and everyone who wants to see positive change to go ahead, get involved, and maybe even run for office. And may the best candidates win.”
Find more inspiring moments from this year’s Glamour Women of the Year Awards here.
On Monday night, November 12, Viola Davis was honored as one of Glamour‘s 2018 Women of the Year in New York City. The actor delivered an important, inspiring speech to the audience that’s necessary reading. But first, she was introduced by Steve McQueen, who directed her upcoming movie Widows. “The truth, the whole truth, and everything but the truth, so help me God. That is Viola Davis,” he said, before introducing the actress.
Read Davis’ full speech, below:
“Chrissy Teigen ruined it for me. I actually don’t have much to say. I just find it so interesting that some of the greatest myths come out of people just dying to themselves and being resurrected. It always starts with a death. It always starts with just hitting rock bottom and having nothing left.
You know, I came from a story where I didn’t feel just less than or I just didn’t have a voice or not pretty. I felt invisible. I came from a long line of women who felt invisible. And they’re the ones who attempted to throw me an invisible rope. Courage is just fear said with prayers. And I feel that it takes a great deal of courage to hit bottom and feel invisible and then to share one’s story. But it’s in the sharing of the story in front of people who have empathy that kills shame. And once that shame is killed, guess what? You’re running. When I look at the zeitgeist today and look at what is happening with women in terms of sexual assault, in terms of poverty, in terms of politically what’s happening, I think to myself the change and the shift that needs to happen is the internal. It’s finding the courage to own one’s story. To say and wake up one day and feel, like, ‘Damn, I’m not perfect. Sometimes I don’t feel pretty. Sometimes I don’t want to slay the dragon. Sometimes the dragon I’m slaying is myself, but damn it, I am worth it. I don’t have to barter for my worth. I don’t have to pay someone for it. I came out of my mom’s womb worthy.’
Courage is just fear said with prayers. And I feel that it takes a great deal of courage to hit bottom and feel invisible and then to share one’s story.
At 25, which was a time in my life that I was at Juilliard, and they basically said, ‘You’re overweight. You’re going to play a matriarch your entire life. What kind of roles can you play, Viola?’ And I thought to myself, ‘Oh my God, I know I’m an actor. I know that’s what I was born to do. That’s what’s going to make my life worthwhile. I know I have something in me.’
There was no one to give me the answer. So I remember I took a trip to Africa, that was paid by Juilliard, by the way, so I have to give them some credit. And I studied the dance, music, and folklore of four different tribes just for a very short period of time. And I went into a village of the Mandinka tribe. One day there were these group of women that came through the tribe, and they were dressed in oversized clothes, oversized shoes. They painted their faces. They had drums, and they had huge calabashes of food. They were screaming at the top of their lungs. Just screaming. They yell. They kept screaming like that and they kept making funny faces, rolling their eyes.
And soon, other people came out of their houses, and pretty soon you saw hundreds of people gathering around them. Hundreds of them. They passed the calabash around of food and they all just slopped it in their mouths. And they slopped it and they ate it and passed it around. And then all those people were screaming. So loud I couldn’t hear myself. I was like, ‘What the hell is this? What ritual is this?’ I later found out these were women who were infertile. And the biggest blessing you could have as a woman in the Gambia was to have a child. These women felt that the reason why they hadn’t be blessed with a child is because God didn’t hear their voice, that God didn’t see them. So the ritual was about as making as much noise as you could possibly make so God could hear it and pour down a blessing.
Be willing to own your story and share it.
We don’t have that ritual here. We pray for connection. We pray to be seen. We pray that somehow that invisibility cloak will be unleashed and reveal us. I say it is up to me to lift that veil and to show you and to have the courage and the vagina to not have to get it together to show up. To show up imperfectly and beautifully and messily as I am. And it’s that truth that connects me to everyone in this room. It is that that that allows you to unleash your story and do the same. You know lighthouses don’t go around the island just shining their light and saving people. They just sort of stand there, shining. That’s what I choose to do with my work. I just choose to be me. And I think that is something that we can all do.
Native Americans would kill the Buffalo and take out the heart and eat it—sort of internalized courage, the courage and the guts to just slay dragons. Biggest dragons I think you can slay is yourself. I’ll tell you 70 percent of women now. There’s been a 70 percent spike of suicide in young women. One of the main reasons is images of on the Internet of women sharing their beautifully perfect life. That’s a known fact, according to the CDC. I say if perfectionism is driving the car, then shame is riding shotgun and fear is that nagging backseat driver.
Be willing to own your story and share it. I’ll tell you one thing: You might as well put the bow and arrow behind you and the sword, because you will be the most courageous person in the world. That’s what my work inspires. That’s what my production company inspires.
My tribe, the people who scream up to the Gods for me, and give me hope are my posse right here: my Lisa, my Estelle, my beautiful Julius. My love of my life, my Genesis, my Elizabeth.
Thank you so much Glamour. Glamour magazine. Thank you for this honor. I kind of have an issue with the word ‘icon.’ Just a little bit! But if it means that you feel like I represent anything and that I inspire anybody to do anything. It’s like they say, you don’t die until the last person who has a memory of you dies.”
In her Women of the Year profile, Davis remembered the early days of her career, when she was a student at Julliard: “I was angry a lot… Nobody asked me to do [classical roles] as a black actress.” Many “bad performances” (her words) and small parts later, her role in 2008’s Doubt would catapult her to wide acclaim and grant her more opportunities and agency as a performer. Now, she can not only help create those narratives (via her company with husband Julius Tennon, JuVee Productions) but also inspire those following in her footsteps. As her How to Get Away With Murder co-star Aja Naomi King said: “To be a black actress, and to have watched the evolution of her career, it’s altered the way I have looked at this entire industry. Every time she wins, it feels like success for all of us. Because here’s the face of this beautiful, tall, striking, dark-skinned, natural-hair-wearing black woman who is basically saying, ‘I dare you to tell me no.'”
Catch up on all the 2018 Women of the Year happenings here.
The stories of our Women of the Year Awards honorees often start with the same idea: a woman who refuses to wait for someone else to make things better. Alone, or with an army behind her, she decides to act. This year’s honorees span a wide range of ages, backgrounds, and professions—a park ranger, a musician, a judge, teens who unflinchingly took on Washington in the face of tragedy. But the one thing they have in common is that they’re all using their platforms to improve the lives of women everywhere.
Hosted by Aidy Bryant at Spring Studios in New York City, Glamour’s 2018 Women of the Year Awards is set to be our biggest, most inspiring yet. In a year that’s often felt marked and marred by darkness—especially for women—these icons represent hope, strength, and resiliency. And they’re sharing that message tonight. Follow along, below, as we re-live every unforgettable moment.
Opening Remarks From Aidy Bryant
“Horny with excitement” isn’t a phrase we’d heard before Aidy Bryant dropped it in past interview with Glamour, but it about sums up the emotion in the room as the comedian took the stage. Bryant has served up some of this season’s most memorable moments on Saturday Night Live, from reprising her role as Sarah Huckabee Sanders to playing prosecutor Rachel Mitchell in a cold opening of the Kavanaugh hearings to appearing as an actual Glamour.com editor moderating a panel about women in film. Naturally, her opening monologue for the night killed it.
“As I look out on this room I ask myself, What does ‘Glamour’ mean? What does ‘Woman’ mean? What does ‘Of the Year’ mean? I ask these questions because I. Am. Dumb,” she said. “But the one thing that I do know, is that every woman is glamorous in her own way. I mean, for me, glamour is in my bones, it’s who I am. Like just a few weeks ago I was in a glamorous Hollywood Hotel, where I elegantly crammed my period stained underwear into a glamorous trash can in the lobby bathroom. I then walked several glitzy blocks to the nearby Rite Aid where I bought a three-pack of new underwear. Beautiful, gorgeous, and a real thing that actually happened to me.”
She went on to introduce the women being honored, giving shoutouts to Viola “Queen V” Davis; Chrissy Teigen for being “an outspoken businesswoman and a mother;” and Senator Kamala Harris for serving on the Homeland Security Committee, the Judiciary Committee, and “the Committee for Throwing the Fuck Down.”
These women, as she put it, are the “boots on the ground, day in and day out doing the damn work.”
Janelle Monáe
It’s been a banner year for the multifaceted musician. Not only did Monáe release her new album Dirty Computer—along with its hit single “Pynk,” “a brash celebration of creation, self-love, sexuality, and pussy power,” as she called it—she’s also been an outspoken supporter of the Women’s March and Time’s Up.
Pose actress MJ Rodriguez presented the singer with her award, saying, “I remember being in high school, dancing, listening and singing to ‘Sincerely Jane’ from Janelle Monáe’s Metropolis album. From that point on I became hooked, her lyrics were transformative.” Rodriguez went on to talk about the power and strength Monáe has instilled not only in her—but in women and femmes around the nation. “Right now, for many women like myself, our civil rights and even our lives are at risk—and as a woman of color and a woman of the trans experience I will say…we refuse to be erased.”
In her acceptance speech, Monáe expanded on how it’s our responsibility to help protect each other. “What growing up in a big family taught me was responsibility,” she said. “Community. And to protect each other. I had no choice. I had to wash dishes, and babysit my cousins. My grandmother was raising all of us. I had to contribute. I’ve taken that same mentality with me into the entertainment industry. I feel a huge responsibility to protect my brothers and sisters in the LGBTQ+ community, women, black folks, immigrants, lower class folks like my parents who put on uniforms to protect me and my sister. I feel a responsibility to protect all the ‘dirty computers’ around the world.”
She said she feels that call not only as an artist, but as a young, black queer woman in America, and she’s not afraid of what the repercussions of standing up to the patriarchy could mean. “I’m not afraid to piss off the abuser of power in chief, who reminds us daily that the freedom we have is not free,” she said. “We have to fight for it. I hope to serve as a reminder that we are not America’s nightmare, but we are the American dream.”
For the past 28 years, Glamour’s Women of the Year Awards has honored game changers, rule breakers, and trailblazers. This year’s class of extraordinary females is no exception. The stories of our honorees often start with the same idea: a woman who refuses to wait for someone else to make things better. Alone, or with an army behind her, she decides to act.
To kick off the celebration, Glamour is hosting our second annual Women of the Year Live Summit at Spring Studios in New York City—led by comedian Phoebe Robinson—followed by our annual awards ceremony on Monday, November 12. The summit will feature sessions with body-positive activist Ashley Graham, Today co-anchors Savannah Guthrie and Hoda Kotb, singer-songwriter Halsey, along with many more inspiring women.
Follow our coverage, below, as we share every unforgettable moment and our panelists’ invaluable wisdom from the Women of the Year Live Summit.
Breakfast With Aerie
PHOTO: Craig Barritt
Our Women of the Year Summit kicked off as any great morning should: with breakfast, a lot of coffee, and a pep talk from Aerie global brand president Jennifer Foyle and #AerieREAL model Iskra Lawrence. The model, who’s been at the forefront of the body positive movement, spoke about the importance of sisterhood and being kind to yourself—and how the brand is making changes to raise women up.
“A few years ago, I started the Mirror Challenge, where instead of looking in the mirror and seeing all the insecurities screaming and shouting at me, I decided I was going to find the things I appreciated about myself,” Lawrence told the crowd. “I either told myself verbally in my head or I wrote it on Post-It notes. So one of the amazing things we implemented in all Aerie stores is having Post-It notes. Changing rooms can be a pretty negative place if you’re not feeling one-hundred or if something doesn’t fit the way you want it to, or if you’re going through changes in your body, we wanted to create a positive environment.”
“So I’m hoping you’ll all start writing your own Post-Its,” she continued, inviting women to come up to the stage and leave their own notes for themselves or another “sister” who could use a word of encouragement. Let’s just say what everyone wrote is surely an example of what’s to come today.
Opening Remarks With Phoebe Robinson
PHOTO: Ilya S. Savenok
“Hello, my name is Phoebe Robinson, and I am your Nordstrom Rack version of Oprah today.” We’d disagree—our host of the day is nobody’s discount emcee, but we wouldn’t expect the author and comedian to kick things off any other way. If you follow her on 2 Dope Queens or have read her book “Everything’s Trash, But It’s Okay,” you know Robinson has a way of finding the humor in even the darkest of topics.
To introduce today’s theme “Women Rise,” she touched on the major wins women have had this year—”The midterm elections were the most exciting thing for me. Two native American women won, a bunch of black women won, hopefully Stacey Abrams will win”—along with the importance of having strong women role models in her own life. “Women have done so much for my career. My mom is a very smart, wonderful, funny woman. She’s where my sense of humor comes from. Writing for magazines like Glamour has been empowering for me. I feel like I’ve learned my biggest lessons from other women. They’ve taught me things like stop telling yourself no before other people do. Stop saying sorry. I’m not saying sorry anymore. I’m going to be like a white guy.”
She ended the speech with a call to share stories about the women who have raised you up using the hashtag #GlamourWOTY. “Send me a picture or photo with your mom, girlfriends, you with your gyno if you’re close to each other, cousins, anyone, a moment that shows women rising up together, celebrating each other.”
For more of Robinson’s best quotes from the Summit, click here.
From Anguish to Action How to Lead During Crisis
PHOTO: Ilya S. Savenok
During the first panel of the day, Glamour Editor-in-Chief Samantha Barry and The Washington Post‘s Global Opinions editor Karen Attiah discussed what happens—and how do you react—when things go horribly wrong. Barry noted that crisis can come in many forms—it can be personal, it can touch your community, or in the gut-wrenching case of Attiah, it can play out on a global stage. Attiah was the editor of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, who was captured and killed because of his work as a reporter.
“We recruited him about a year ago to write for us,” said Attiah. “He put himself into self-exile. He was critical of the Saudi Crown Prince in particular. He was someone who really believed in his country, really loved Saudi Arabia, but he just wanted to be free to speak his mind about the country.” Attiah said she’s still trying to cope with the horrific loss. “I still can’t believe he was taken from us and from his family in such a brutal way. It’s not just an attack on journalism, it’s an attack on The Washington Post.” The one thing that keeps her—and the team—going, she said, is not a fight against the attacks on journalists, but a fight to tell the truth.
She also discussed President Trump’s dangerous rhetoric surrounding the media, and women of color in the media in particular. (Many were surprised to learn that Khashoggi’s editor was a young woman of color.) “If he’s attacked three black women journalists, we don’t have black women or women of color who are White House correspondents,” said Attiah. “We can’t control Trump, but what the media can control is how seriously we take sending reporters who represent the world around us and represent the demographics trends that the U.S. is going in. Many times my white colleagues don’t have the same grounding or sensibilities. That is a reckoning we should have.”
As for advice for the other women in the room? “Sometimes you feel like Tweeting into the void doesn’t always help,” she said. “I think I heard the advice once that to a certain extent journalism or opinion writing can be about anger—about righteous anger. You’re seeing what’s going on, and you’re asking questions. That’s a way of pushing back. At a very basic level, I used to journal. Try to write [your anger] out, to get it out there, and use your creativity to channel what you’re feeling. Sometimes just expressing what you’re going through is a form of creating bonds, solidarity, and activism.”
My Woman Rise Moment: I Listened to That Inner Voice
You might know Yvonne Orji as Issa Rae’s wisecracking best friend, Molly, on HBO’s Insecure. But what you might not know is that her journey to get there was entirely faith led. Orji emigrated from Nigeria to America when she was six years old, and says she never imagined a career in comedy was a even possibility…until God showed her the way one fateful evening in college.
“One night, when I was trying to figure out what was next and needed some clarity, I heard Him say, “Do comedy,” she told the room. “I wasn’t funny. I was like, nobody laughs at me. Nobody was like, ‘That Yvonne is SUPER funny.’ At that point, I was on my way to becoming a doctor. I was stalling because I got my masters in public health. This is what you do when you’re the child of immigrants—you go to school to avoid going to school. And then after I got my masters, I was still not ready to be a doctor. I wanted to go to Liberia, which was just finishing a war, because it was easier for me to go to a war-torn country than tell my parents that I wasn’t going to be a doctor.”
On a leap of faith, she made the jump though and moved to New York City to pursue comedy, which went about as well as you’d expect. “Pretty soon after I moved to New York, I found myself with zero dollars and zero leads,” she said. “Let me tell you right now: That’s not sexy. OK? Because Sallie Mae wants her money, like all of it.” She continued: “Here I was, 25 years old, with two degrees, and not even the $7 to get a slice of pizza. I was like, was this really the life I risked it all for? I have a family that loves me and cares about me, and I am broke.”
The thing she says turned it all around was the power of saying yes to whatever opportunity came her way. “I said yes to the temp job I hated but allowed me to perform comedy at night,” she said. “I said yes to taking over a stand-up show in New York City. I said yes to a residency in a college production in Richmond, Virginia, that gave me two days to get there. I said yes to being a writer in the writers room for a TV show in L.A.”
Her parting words for the audience? “Inside all of us exists some kind of compass—whether it’s divine or otherwise—but it’s something desperately trying to navigate you and all of us to the life we know we were destined to live. So I think the choice is pretty simple: Keep letting fear sidetrack you or take what you’ve been given, maybe even told from God above, and say yes. But whatever it is, keep going. Keep doing it.”
Just a few years ago, it was unheard of to see anything other than thin, flawless, mostly white models in fashion ads. And models with any kind of visible health condition? Forget about it. Times are changing, though, and in part thanks to brands like Aerie, women of all different backgrounds, abilities, and sizes are now being celebrated for who they are. And that’s exactly what our Stop Hiding, Start Shining panel was about.
AerieREAL Role Models Danielle Candray (an alopecia advocate), Gaylyn Henderson (the founder of Gutless and Glamorous), and Evelyn Riddell (a type-1 diabetes advocate) joined Jess Weiner, the CEO of Talk To Jess (an organization about women’s empowerment), to discuss the social stigmas around health conditions and how they’re finally beginning to fade.
“I was only 14 when I was diagnosed with Crohn’s Disease, an inflammatory bowel autoimmune disease that can affect your entire body,” said Henderson. “Because of the severity of my condition my doctors told me I needed an ostomy—which meant removing my entire colon. At first, I said no way. I thought I was too young—I thought an ostomy was for old people. That it would smell. That it was nasty! And all I could think was I didn’t want to spend my whole life with a bag hanging off of me. But there came a time that I had no choice. I was in constant excruciating pain and getting worse. The disease was killing me.”
She went on to discuss how much better she felt after getting the procedure, and how much it meant to be cast in a global underwear campaign as a model with a colostomy bag. (Something that was met with much fanfare when her ads launched earlier this year.) “I’m an underwear model—it’s incredible!” she said. “I always tell people, ‘You have to do what’s best for you, no matter how it may look to somebody else.’ It’s a process, accepting yourself for all that you are. But being authentic with yourself and sharing your truth is essential. It’s a superpower, and everyone in this room has it.”
Turn a Big Idea Into Bigger Business
PHOTO: Ilya S. Savenok
Here’s a not-so-fun fact for you: For the second year in a row, only 2.2 percent of venture capital funding is going to female-led companies. The women on our business panel—which was moderated by Sutian Dong, partner at Female Founders Fund—fall in that tiny percent and shared with the audience how they were able to defy the odds and launch successful companies with VC support. Audrey Gelman is the founder of The Wing, a women’s co-working space and social club; Tyler Haney is founder and CEO of athleisure line Outdoor Voices; and Jen Rubio is the co-founder of Away luggage, those adorable suitcases you’re seeing all over Instagram.
If you’re looking to start your own brand, here are biggest takeaways you need to know:
Nobody knows your business better than you. “We realized there was no such thing as traditional start-up experience,” said Rubio. “We said we’re going to build the Warby Parker of luggage, but we realized there is no play book … You’re going to get a lot of advice from people, but unless your inputs are the same, that advice doesn’t go. So we took a lot of advice and learned to filter through that.”
Don’t get discouraged by the no’s. “Being a woman when you’re building a company for a woman is an advantage,” said Haney. “There’s an opportunity for a female to shake up the space and create a brand that is resonating for everyone. What I found is that I got a lot of nos at first because guys didn’t get it. But what worked ahead of time was when I sent things to wives of the investors. That is when I started to get yeses.”
Be really, really sure that you want to do it. “Know there is a lot of crap coming your way,” said Gelman. “It’s part of the job.”
“What gets remembered is determined by who is in the room doing the remembering,” Betty Reid Soskin likes to say. The 97-year-old park ranger is one of our Women of the Year honorees, and she’s made it her life’s mission to make sure the stories of underrepresented people are being documented and celebrated. One of her biggest achievements? The Rosie the Riveter/WWII Home Front National Historical Park, where she leads talks about the Rosies and the typically white narrative about the women who served the war effort, but also interweaves her experience as a young black woman in segregated America.
Soskin and moderator Kimberly Drew, an art curator and social media manager for the Metropolitan Museum of Art, discussed how women (and particularly women of color) have to fight claim a seat at the table—and because of us doing so, we’re seeing our history being written in a more inclusive way. “Because I was in the room, albeit as a field rep, I was able to supply so much of the history that—by no means was being ignored by intent—but was rolled over by history,” Soskin told Drew. “I was able to participate in the history of a national park just by being in the room.”
She says that now, at 97, she’s able to look back and know that these periods of chaos are the moments when democracy is being redefined. “It’s in those periods where we can get at the reset buttons,” she said, adding, “Every single day, in every way, by what we do or fail to do, we are creating tomorrow. And just as I helped to create the future that I’m now live in, everyone in this room is creating the future their children are going to live in.”
Even despite the dark history currently being written during the Trump era (like Charlottesville), Soskin says she’s optimistic that Americans will ultimately fight to do what’s right. “The power is in us collectively. We’ve proven that ever since 1776,” she said. “I think that’s where my optimism comes from: Having lived long enough to know that it’ll work out.”
Closing the Dream Gap: Showing Girls (and Ourselves) What’s Next
PHOTO: Ilya S. Savenok
If anyone’s qualified to talk about making your dreams come true, it’s three women who have refused to take no for an answer: Mindy Kaling, Hoda Kotb, and Savannah Guthrie. But even the Today co-hosts and * The Mindy Project* star acknowledged it’s easier said than done. Their biggest advice for women looking to build their confidence and make their dreams come true is to put in the hard work. From that, they say, comes the confidence and the courage to think you can achieve anything.
“I always just did the leg work, and it meant I never came to anything unprepared,” Kaling told the crowd. “The only reason I was able to be confident was because I literally couldn’t not be confident with the amount of research and preparation I did.”
Kotb, Guthrie, and Kaling also discussed a conundrum many women face: the balance between being assertive and coming across as “likable.” Kaling told a self-deprecating anecdote about how never being perceived as conventionally attractive by men actually made asking for things easier. “When you are ignored in that way, things like confidence and asking for things in your professional career become a little easier,” she said.
Comedian and author Phoebe Robinson isn’t just one half of 2 Dope Queens—she’s also the emcee of Glamour‘s 2018 Women of the Year Summit. (Oh, and a former Glamour.com contributor, to boot.) On top of hosting the day’s festivities, Robinson spoke on the “No Blueprint, No Problem—the Power of Being an Outlier” panel, moderated by Ashley Graham, alongside Younger‘s Nico Tortorella, Pose‘s Indya Moore, and Arrested Development‘s Alia Shawkat. And throughout the day, she had a lot of wisdom to share. Her best quotes, below.
“` I am your Nordstrom Rack version of Oprah today.”
“Women have been kicking ass nonstop this year, from all the black women on magazine covers in the fall. That was very exciting. Nobody wanted to cheer for that? That’s OK. You don’t care? OK! Cute, cute, cute! Emma Stone was on a cover. Do you guys care about that?”
“You’re all working women. You’re career women. You’re stunning women.”
“I can talk to myself. I’m more than happy to talk to myself. ‘Hey Pheebs, How’s it going? Not too bad. I’m wearing Spanx. Can’t breathe. I’m wearing this dress I can do a split in.’ Women rise, my dough is rising honey.”
“I feel like I’ve learned my biggest lessons from other women: supporting each other, stop telling yourself no, don’t count yourself out. Stop saying sorry. That’s been a big one for me. I’m not apologizing anymore. I’m ‘gonna be like a white guy. No apologies from me ever! I’m always right!”
“I need you to cheer like Mumford & Sons is about to come out. I need you to cheer like Drew Barrymore’s ‘gonna give you guys all Crocs. I need you to cheer like Michael B. Jordan’s ‘gonna come out and propose to me.”
Catch up on all the 2018 Women of the Year happenings here.
Since ending her seven-year stint on Saturday Night Live in 2007, alumna Maya Rudolph has managed to keep us laughing as Lillian in Bridesmaids and in cameos on Emmy-nominated TV shows like Brooklyn Nine-Nine, The Good Place, and Angie Tribeca. Now, Rudolph is starring in a show of her own on Amazon, titled Forever, alongside her former SNL castmate Fred Armisen. Without giving anything major away, the comedic pair play June and Oscar, a married couple, who deal with the trials and tribulations of lifelong commitment. Ahead of the show’s release on September 14, Rudolph answered “The Big Questions” for Glamour‘s October issue, below.
What is your full name, and where does it come from?
Maya Khabira Rudolph. My parents were hippie musicians. All my life my dad told me my middle name means She Who Received the Message.
What’s your idea of true happiness?
A warm, sleeping kid wrapped around me.
If you could be anyone, real or fictional, who would you be?
You’re talking to a professional drag queen, but I’d have to say Beyoncé.
What’s a headline you’d love to read about yourself?
“Oldest Living Person.”
Helen Green
“Never have I ever…”
Gone skydiving. I’ll never jump out of a plane voluntarily.
What’s something you wish you’d written?
“Once in a Lifetime” by Talking Heads.
If you were on a dating app, what would your opening line be?
“I love chopped salad and going to bed by 9:00 P.M. Wanna party?”
What chapter of your life would be most fascinating to read?
My SNL years. It seems like another lifetime to have been that driven, had that much adrenaline, slept that little, and been so productive.
You’re stuck on a desert island and can bring only three things. What are they?
There would have to be music. So Prince, Jon & Vinny’s pizza, and tequila.
You have to give up sex, booze, or laughter. Pick one.
Booze. So I guess I’m stuck with Prince and pizza.
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