Featured Articles

  • Charlize Theron – “She was running the show and I want to be like that”

    Charlize Theron – “She was running the show and I want to be like that”

    Charlize Theron admires her mother as a role model, and a woman with strong individuality. “It was the greatest thing she has given me. I don’t think she knows that. I don’t even think she set out to teach me that. “That’s just how she lived her life and what she encouraged me to do. [...]

  • Lady Gaga: “I don’t see myself as ever being like anybody else.”

    Lady Gaga: “I don’t see myself as ever being like anybody else.”

    Here is a preview of the special interview and profile “Gaga By Gaultier,” broadcast Monday Sep 12, 2011, CW Television. At age 17, Lady Gaga achieved early admission to New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts. Her music videos – such as clips in a recent Barbara Walters interview with her – show her [...]

  • Healing and art: SARK and others on abuse and creativity

    Healing and art: SARK and others on abuse and creativity

    SARK SARK (Susan Ariel Rainbow Kennedy) is the bestselling author and artist of fifteen books, including Succulent Wild Woman, Bodacious Book of Succulence, Eat Mangoes Naked, and other titles. She is an acclaimed speaker and teacher, and CEO and founder of Planet SARK, a business that promotes empowered living, and her writings and artwork. One [...]

  • Idina Menzel on embracing your uniqueness

    Idina Menzel on embracing your uniqueness

    Actor and singer Idina Menzel commented in an interview about what her character Elphaba in “Wicked” meant to her, especially in terms of the courage to be yourself. “When you’re an artist usually you have to take risks and usually you have to put yourself on the line and go against the grain in order [...]

Sofia Coppola on enhancing creativity

Sofia Coppola on enhancing creativity

About one of the topics of her movie “Marie Antoinette,” director Sofia Coppola once commented, “You’re considered superficial and silly if you are interested in fashion, but I think you can be substantial and still be interested in frivolity.” One way many talented people can be self-critical is to judge their wide-ranging serial interests as [...]

Amelia Earhart: “I do it because I want to.”

Amelia Earhart: “I do it because I want to.”

“Some of us have great runways already built for us. If you have one, take off! But if you don’t have one, realize it is your responsibility to grab a shovel and build one for yourself and for those who will follow after you.” Amelia Earhart She also commented, “Flying may not be all plain sailing, but [...]

Healing and art: Exene Cervenka: “Something really bad is a blessing and a curse”

Healing and art: Exene Cervenka: “Something really bad is a blessing and a curse”

“Exene Cervenka has transitioned successfully through a variety of career phases, starting with her stint in X, the band that perhaps best embodied the character of L.A.’s punk subculture of the early ’80s. “She moved on to the rootsy folk-country side project the Knitters with other members of X and the Blasters, then launched a [...]

Courteney Cox on sensitivity, and needing to be acknowledged

Courteney Cox on sensitivity, and needing to be acknowledged

“I have, like, hyper-awareness. It’s like a disease. I can’t help it. I notice everything.” [From Courteney in Control, By Hilary De Vries, marieclaire.com August 2006; photo by James White] A newer profile article says “Cox, who considers herself always to have been sensitive, has grown even more so since having a kid [5-year-old daughter, [...]

Michelle Obama, Sonia Sotomayor and the impostor syndrome

Michelle Obama, Sonia Sotomayor and the impostor syndrome

Video and transcript from The Rachel Maddow Show June 4 2009 – MADDOW:  If choosing a summa cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa, Princeton graduate with the J.D. from Yale, and 11 years experience on the second circuit of the U.S. Court of Appeals—where only three of her hundreds of opinions have been overturned by the [...]

Creativity and women: the documentary Who Does She Think She Is?

Creativity and women: the documentary Who Does She Think She Is?

From review by Pauline on CHICKS ROCK! : “This documentary film follows the trials and tribulations of five women artists, and how they maintain the shaky balance between motherhood and art in their lives. It is the kind of movie everyone should see, but may not be able to because of limited media coverage. “Who [...]

Artistic confidence – Doris Day: insecure about her looks and talents

Artistic confidence – Doris Day: insecure about her looks and talents

Not like the movies A new biography looks into the shadows and ‘Untold Story’ of Doris Day On screen, she was America’s smiling, singing darling. But off screen, her husbands weren’t Rock Hudson and her life was no light romp. A former singer with Les Brown’s band in the 1940s. Day was always portrayed as [...]

Heather Thomas on trophy wives and feminizing influences on politics and the internet

Heather Thomas on trophy wives and feminizing influences on politics and the internet

Heather Thomas based her new novel “Trophies” on Hollywood trophy wives – who, she says “get a bad rap, and there’s a lot of misconceptions about them. But really, there isn’t a hospital wing or a library in this city that wasn’t the result of some trophy wife’s efforts.” Here is an excerpt from the [...]

Self-esteem and maturity: Jamie Lee Curtis on growing older and liking it

Self-esteem and maturity: Jamie Lee Curtis on growing older and liking it

Stronger, smarter, less crazy Jamie Lee Curtis says she embraces getting older: “I actually think there’s an incredible amount of self-knowledge that comes with getting older. I feel way better now than I did when I was 20. I’m stronger, I’m smarter in every way, I’m so much less crazy than I was then. “Years [...]

Motivating genius and talent: Ann Curry on Perseverance

Motivating genius and talent: Ann Curry on Perseverance

Never give up News journalist Ann Curry [Today show etc] was born in Guam to a Japanese mother and a father of predominantly French and Scots-Irish descent from Colorado. [Wikipedia profile.] She has talked about how her multi-ethnic background was at times in her life painful, but has also helped fuel her ambition to achieve, [...]

Jenny McCarthy on motherhood and guilt

Jenny McCarthy on motherhood and guilt

Jenny McCarthy was a guest on the Oprah and Eckhart Tolle’s A New Earth Online Class. She spoke about her complex emotional reactions in raising her autistic son Evan. Making the connection Jenny: You know, I read this book [A New Earth, by Eckhart Tolle] when it first came out and that was one of [...]

Women and Ambition and Power – It’s Complicated

Women and Ambition and Power – It’s Complicated

Anne Boleyn “She was a woman of charm, style and wit, and will and savagery.” That is a description of Anne Boleyn (second wife of Henry VIII) by Susan Brigden, author of New Worlds, Lost Worlds: The Rule of the Tudors, 1485-1603. Natalie Portman portrays Anne in The Other Boleyn Girl [right], and says she [...]

Empowering yourself: Feminist Majority Foundation video

Empowering yourself: Feminist Majority Foundation video

Feminist Majority Foundation video: This is What a Feminist Looks Like! Related perspective: Elizabeth Wurtzel on feminism “Feminism, which was meant to be fun, has lately started to seem so sour… But it cannot be the case that we went through all that bra-burning and consciousness-raising to be left choosing between, yet again, the madonna [...]

Building identity: The courage to define yourself

Building identity: The courage to define yourself

“Listening to your heart is not simple. Finding out who you are is not simple. It takes a lot of hard work and courage to get to know who you are and what you want.” That is a quote by Sue Bender, author of Everyday Sacred: A Woman’s Journey Home. Mena Suvari According to a [...]