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Women of the year: Talking on eggs
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Nov. 15, 1999 |
In bursts Camryn
Manheim, ebullient, exclaiming, "Bobbi Brown! Bobbi Brown!
My lipstick!" I pause mid-powder-pat and look up as the makeup maven whose name is on my
compact walks into the room. It's a "Purple Rose of Cairo" sort of moment. And
suddenly, I feel almost as giddy as Camryn. Camera-ready odd couples were everywhere at Glamour magazine's Women of the
Year awards Thursday night. (For the record: Collins, Whitman and Manheim were all honored this year, as
were Jewel, Jennifer Lopez, Harry Potter author J.K Rowling,
celebrity wife/activist Mavis Leno, breast-cancer crusader Evelyn
Lauder, mother-daughter justice seekers Aurelia and LaShonda
Davis and the U.S. Women's Soccer
team.) There was Elizabeth Dole, who received a lifetime achievement award,
posing with Jewel. (Flash!) There was Barbara Walters, lifetime achiever No. 2, embracing the
Davises, honored for fighting to hold schools responsible for student-on-student
sexual harassment. (Flash!) There were pols Donna Shalala and Barbara Boxer chatting it
up with members of the soccer team as alpha advisor
Naomi Wolf, plus-size model Emme and civil rights activist
Myrlie Evers-Williams, among other current and past honorees, circulated
in the background. (Flash ... flash-flash!) And that was just at the pre-show press conference. Katie Couric, clad in a sleeveless black leather sheath and high black
boots ("Am I a glamour do or what?" she crowed), kicked off the festivities by
reciting the highlights of the year that was: "Monica moved on, and so did
we," she said. "Hillary hit the campaign trail." But when she got to Martha Stewart's highly successful
IPO, she got a little personal: "I thought we bonded over all that candle-dipping,"
she quipped. "But she didn't call. She didn't write. So there goes my piece of that
IPO." Accepting her award, Camryn Manheim riffed on her own "This is for all the fat
girls" Emmy Award-night rallying cry. "Glamour magazine," she mused. "Wow,
who would have thought?" Elizabeth Dole said, "It's a relief to me and I'm sure to all of you that I'm not here
to ask you for money." She also shared her one campaign regret, which played
directly to a fellow award winner: "I should've announced that Harry Potter
would be my running mate." J.K. Rowling confided, "I'm so proud to be here, and I'd be so much less nervous
if you were all 9 years old." Even Walters seemed transported by all the love in the room. "I wish I
could interview each and every one of you," she said, "and I promise I would ask
only nice questions." Then she leaned close and admitted, "I've been reading
Glamour magazine for 61 years." Amy Reiter Amy Reiter's column appears daily on the People site, Monday through Friday.
Got a hot tip? Tell Amy! Babs came late and left early, but she put in more time than did Jennifer Lopez, who explained via video that while winning the award was "very big" for her, she simply couldn't get out of a film shoot to attend. (She really should have been there -- no ifs, ands or butts.) When the World Cup soccer players accepted their award, Mia Hamm flashed a little modesty ("Are you kidding me? What are we doing here?"), but Brandi Chastain kept her shirt on. Then it was off to the post-show gala in a pink-lighted tent, where food, music, dancing and brightly colored beverages were abundant and table seating was scarce. Dizzy from the celeb-seeking flashbulbs and the attendant cries of "over here," I soon slipped away into the chilly New York night only to rise early the next day for yet another Glamour event. (Those Condé Nast types clearly do not like to stop partying.) The intimate Women of the Year roundtable breakfast gave a select few of us a chance to ask the celebrities in attendance (seated, somewhat poetically, before a shattered glass wall) anything on our minds. So of course the topic quickly turned to auctioning off models' eggs. Emme was outraged that Time ran her photo alongside its model-egg story: "I was quite embarrassed. Those are my eggs you're talking about!" Mavis Leno wisely noted, "You may be gorgeous and you may be married to someone gorgeous, and you could still give birth to blubby Uncle Fred." Mary Schiavo, former inspector general of the Department of Transportation, pointed out the gender inequity of Nobel Prize-winner sperm banks and model eggs: "If I needed someone else's eggs, I'd go looking for the female Nobel Prize winners," she said. As for me, after all that egg talk, I was just glad I had the pancakes.
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