Redefining Glamour
I attended Glamour Magazine’s 19th annual Women of the Year Awards and dinner last night in New York. The electrifying evening featured a who’s who of the powerful, influential and beautiful: Nicole Kidman; Condoleezza Rice; Hillary Clinton; Tyra Banks; Chanel CEO Maureen Chiquet; environmentalist Jane Goodall; artist Kara Walker; three Nobel winners, Jody Williams, Rigoberta Menchu Tum, and Shirin Ebadi; Olympians Misty May-Treanor (still on crutches from her accident on Dancing with the Stars) and Kerri Walsh. Presenters included Mayor Mike Bloomberg, Natalie Portman, Salman Rushdie, Barbara Walters, Katie Couric, and America Ferrera, among others.
Then there was 10-year-old Nujood Mohammed Ali of Yemen, wearing an eggplant-colored caftan, her long ebony hair pulled off her petite face in a orange headband. When Nujood was nine, her impoverished parents married her off to a 30-year-old man, who promised not to consummate the marriage until Nujood was older. It didn’t work out that way. So one day, she took a bus and a cab to the courthouse, and waited until the judge noticed her. When he asked what she wanted, she replied, “a divorce.” Working with human rights lawyer Shada Nasser, Nujood became the country’s first child bride to legally end her marriage. She is back with her family and received a scholarship to school.
Child brides are common in Yemen, where per capita income is $900 a year, and the birth rate is among the highest in the world (the average Yemeni woman bears seven children). Nearly half the population is under age 15, and the estimated illiteracy rate among women is 65 percent.
Nujood gave a brief, halting speech in Arabic, smiling shyly at the packed house at Carnegie Hall. She said she wanted to protect herself, and other girls like her. It was heart-rending to watch as I thought of my own daughters, who are 11, 9 and 6. The Girls World Communication Center provides schooling and skills training to help Yemeni girls at risk of early marriage become self-sufficient. Click here to support the cause.
At the dinner after the awards, I had the pleasure of meeting the gracious Ms. Rice and American Idol winner David Cook, a terrifically nice guy who is psyched about his debut album, Bar ba sol, out next week. (He actually made Hillary Clinton blush with his serenade, “The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face.”) Congratulations to Glamour editor-in-chief Cindi Leive for a remarkable and inspiring evening.
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