Keeping up with Sarah

Inspiring Women

While I'm searching for biographies of women to inspire me, I should be looking around me at the women I know. This morning while reading The New York Times I came across an article accompanying a photograph by a college acquiantance, Diane Bondareff. Diane has been pursuing her dream of being a photographer since college, despite the difficulties of freelancing, finding steady work, the grueling hours and the competition and has made a successful career for herself. This morning I'm inspired by her pluck and determination that never diminished her generosity and humbleness, a combination that seems rare among the ambitious. She has her own website; take a look at her work.

My quest for female role models

Go to a mainstream bookstore, not Hir Books or Gynobooks or its ilk, and look through the biography section for biographies of women. After all,since half or more of the population has been female for the entire history of human kind, you'd expect that half of the biographies would be of women, wouldn't you? Alas, tis not the case.

Okay, so there's a paucity of female biographies to start. Let's poke through them: Eleanor Roosevelt, great woman, how did she become famous? Married the President, you say? Jackie Kennedy Onassis: great dresser, didn't she become famous by marrying the President? Katherine Graham: media mogul, well, inherited a media empire from her dad. On one tour through Olsen's I could only find one female's biography that didn't owe their fame to their famous spouse or daddy.

Hence this list:

Women who owe their fame only to themselves, and where to read about them. Please feel free to email additions.