My Daughter Went Viral At 3 Months Old, We Still Continue To Represent Empowering Women In History And Today

An Austrian-born American film actress and inventor.
Often referred to as one of the most gorgeous and exotic of Hollywood's leading ladies, Lamarr made a number of well-received films during the 1930s and 1940s.
In 1942, during the heyday of her career, Lamarr earned recognition in a field quite different from entertainment. She and her friend, the composer George Antheil, received a patent for an idea of a radio signaling device, or "Secret Communications System," which was a means of changing radio frequencies to keep enemies from decoding messages. Originally designed to defeat the German Nazis, the system became an important step in the development of technology to maintain the security of both military communications and cellular phones.
Lamarr wasn't instantly recognized for her communications invention since its wide ranging impact wasn't understood until decades later. However, in 1997 Lamarr and Antheil were honored with the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) Pioneer Award, and that same year Lamarr became the first female to receive the BULBIE™ Gnass Spirit of Achievement Award, considered the "Oscars" of inventing.

Oprah Winfrey is an American media executive, actress, talk show host, television producer and philanthropist. She is best known for her talk show The Oprah Winfrey Show, which was the highest-rated television program of its kind in history and was nationally syndicated from 1986 to 2011 in Chicago. Dubbed the "Queen of All Media", she was the richest African American of the 20th century and North America's first black multi-billionaire, and has been ranked the greatest black philanthropist in American history. She has also been sometimes ranked as the most influential woman in the world.
According to Forbes magazine, Oprah was the richest African American of the 20th century and the world's only Black billionaire for three years running. Life magazine hailed her as the most influential woman of her generation. In 2005, Business Week named her the greatest Black philanthropist in American history. Oprah's Angel Network has raised more than $50 million for charitable programs, including girls' education in South Africa and relief to the victims of Hurricane Katrina. She has donated $425 million throughout her career, including over $100 million to the Oprah Winfrey Leadership Academy for Girls in South Africa.
In January 2018, Winfrey became the first African-American woman to be honored with the Golden Globes' Cecil B. DeMille Award, for lifetime achievement.

Mary Lou Retton is a retired American gymnast. At the 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles, she won a gold medal in the individual all-around competition, as well as two silver medals and two bronze medals. Her performance made her one of the most popular athletes in the United States.
Retton was the first ever American woman to win the all-around gold medal at the Olympics and was the only one to do so for twenty years. She is credited with being a pioneering figure in American women's gymnastics

Alison Bechdel is an American cartoonist. Originally best known for the long-running comic strip Dykes to Watch Out For, which was first published in WomaNews, a feminist newspaper. The strip ran from 1983 to 2008 and was syndicated in more than 50 alternative papers around the country; it has also been collected into books. She came to critical and commercial success in 2006 with her graphic memoir Fun Home, which was subsequently adapted as a musical and won a Tony Award for Best Musical in 2015. In 2012, she released her second graphic memoir Are You My Mother?
Then in 2014, the author received the MacArthur Fellows “Genius” Award. She has also greatly influenced analysis of the cinematic world, with the Bechdel Test, coined from her comic strip, utilized to measure the presence of female characters in film.
The Bechdel test moved into mainstream criticism in the 2010s and has been described as "the standard by which feminist critics judge television, movies, books, and other media". In 2013, an Internet newspaper described it as "almost a household phrase, common shorthand to capture whether a film is woman-friendly".

Theresa Kachindamoto: the paramount chief, or Inkosi, of the Dedza District in the central region of Malawi. She has informal authority over more than 900,000 people. She is known for her forceful action in dissolving child marriages and insisting on education for both girls and boys.
Chief Kachindamoto is known for her fierce leadership in annulling over 1,500 child marriages and sending girls back to school in Dedza district, in the central region of Malawi.
When Theresa assumed office as chief in 2003, she was disturbed to find that there were high rates of child-marriages in her district. This encouraged her to begin her campaign. Her efforts came with a lot of resistance from the community, from parents and even from the child couples themselves. The key challenge in ending child-marriages in Malawi is the acceptance of the practice as a norm as well as poverty. Girls are often married off to improve a family’s financial standing or at times to repay a debt. Taking that into consideration, Kachindamoto knew that she would have a tough time trying to convince the community to stop the practice and change their mindset. Instead, she changed the law. Theresa got her 50 sub-chiefs to sign an agreement to abolish early marriage under customary-law and annul any existing unions in her area of authority.
When asked about what inspires her to keep working on this issue, Chief Kachindamoto said, “When girls are educated, everything is possible."

“I’d like to encourage all of you to go out and help push the boundaries of science, even if it may at first seem as mysterious to you as a black hole.”

Katie Bouman is an American imaging scientist and Assistant Professor of Computer Science at the California Institute of Technology. She researches computational methods for imaging, and developed an algorithm that made possible the first picture visualization of a black hole using the Event Horizon Telescope. She was part of the team of over 200 people who implemented the project and was the first person to see a visualization of a black hole.
Bouman developed an algorithm known as Continuous High-resolution Image Reconstruction using Patch priors, or CHIRP. This algorithm was one of the algorithms used to image the supermassive black hole inside the core of the galaxy Messier 87, the other being CLEAN which was introduced by Jan Högbom.
Bouman was responsible at MIT for an algorithm used in creating the first images of a black hole, published in April 2019, providing computational support to learn about general relativity in the strong-field regime. The machine learning algorithm fills in gaps in data produced by telescopes from around the world. Bouman led efforts in "the verification of images and selection of imaging parameters" for the Event Horizon Telescope.

An American actress, singer, dancer, and vaudevillian. During a career that spanned 45 years, she attained international stardom as an actress in both musical and dramatic roles, as a recording artist, and on the concert stage. Respected for her versatility, she received a juvenile Academy Award, a Golden Globe Award, and a Special Tony Award. Garland was the first woman to win the Grammy Award for Album of the Year for her live recording Judy at Carnegie Hall .
By the time of her death in 1969, Garland had appeared in more than 35 films. She has been called one of the greats of entertainment, and her reputation has endured. In 1992, Gerald Clarke of Architectural Digest dubbed Garland "probably the greatest American entertainer of the twentieth century". O'Brien believes that "No one in the history of Hollywood ever packed the musical wallop that Garland did", explaining, "She had the biggest, most versatile voice in movies. Her Technicolor musicals... defined the genre. The songs she introduced were Oscar gold. Her film career frames the Golden Age of Hollywood musicals." Turner Classic Movies dubbed Garland "history's most poignant voice". Entertainment Weekly's Gene Lyons dubbed Garland "the Madonna of her generation". The American Film Institute named her eighth among the Greatest female stars of Golden Age Hollywood cinema.
Garland was posthumously awarded the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 1997. Several of her recordings have been inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame. These include "Over the Rainbow", which was ranked as the number one movie song of all time in the American Film Institute's "100 Years...100 Songs" list.

Aretha Franklin just became the first woman ever awarded a Pulitzer Prize Special Award for her “incredible contribution to American music and culture for more than five decades.” With 18 Grammy wins, this award re-confirms the impact that her music continues to have on the world!

“My mother told me to be a lady. And for her, that meant be your own person, be independent,” Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

Lady Gaga is an American singer, songwriter, and actress. She is known for her unconventionality and provocative work, as well as visual experimentation.
Having sold 27 million albums and 146 million singles as of January 2016, Gaga is one of the best-selling music artists in history. Her achievements include several Guinness World Records, six Grammys, three Brit Awards, and an award from the Songwriters Hall of Fame and the Council of Fashion Designers of America. Gaga has been declared Billboard's Artist of the Year and included among Forbes's power and earnings rankings.
Gaga has been often regarded as a trailblazer for sometimes utilizing controversy to bring attention to various issues. Time placed Gaga on their All-Time 100 Fashion Icons List, stating: "Lady Gaga is just as notorious for her outrageous style as she is for her pop hits.
She is known for her philanthropy and social activism, including LGBT rights, and for her non-profit organization, the Born This Way Foundation, which focuses on promoting youth empowerment and combating bullying.

An American professor of animal science at Colorado State University, consultant to the livestock industry on animal behavior, and autism spokesperson. She is one of the first individuals on the autism spectrum to publicly share insights from her personal experience of autism. She invented the "hug box" device to calm those on the autism spectrum. In the 2010 Time 100, an annual list of the 100 most influential people in the world, she was named in the "Heroes" category.
She has lectured widely about her first-hand experiences of the anxiety of feeling threatened by everything in her surroundings, and of being dismissed and feared, which motivates her work in humane livestock handling processes. She studied the behavior of cattle, how they react to ranchers, movements, objects, and light. Grandin then designed adapted curved corrals, intended to reduce stress, panic and injury in animals being led to slaughter. While her designs are widely used throughout the slaughterhouse industry, her claim of compassion for the animals is that because of her autism she can see the animals' reality from their viewpoint, that when she holds an animal's head in her hands as it is being slaughtered, she feels a deep, godlike connection to them.
Based on personal experience, Grandin advocates early intervention to address autism and supportive teachers, who can direct fixations of the child with autism in fruitful directions. She has described her hypersensitivity to noise and other sensory stimuli. She says words are her second language and that she thinks "totally in pictures," using her vast visual memory to translate information into a slideshow of mental images that can be manipulated or correlated.

A Pakistani politician who became the first woman leader of a Muslim nation in modern history. She served two terms as prime minister of Pakistan.
She was elected co-chairwoman of the Pakistan People’s Party, along with her mother, and when free elections were finally held in 1988, she herself became Prime Minister. At 35, she was one of the youngest chief executives in the world, and the first woman to serve as prime minister in an Islamic country.
Only two years into her first term, President Ghulam Ishaq Khan dismissed Bhutto from office. She initiated an anti-corruption campaign, and in 1993 was re-elected as Prime Minister. While in office, she brought electricity to the countryside and built schools all over the country. She made hunger, housing and healthcare her top priorities, and looked forward to continuing to modernize Pakistan.
In 1996, President Leghari of Pakistan dismissed Benazir Bhutto from office, alleging mismanagement, and dissolved the National Assembly. Bhutto’s husband was imprisoned, and once again, she was forced to leave her homeland. For nine years, she and her children lived in exile in London, where she continued to advocate the restoration of democracy in Pakistan. In 2007 Benazir Bhutto and her husband returned to their native country.
Although she was greeted by enthusiastic crowds, within hours of her arrival, her motorcade was attacked by a suicide bomber. She survived this first assassination attempt, although more than 100 bystanders died in the attack. With national elections scheduled for January 2008, her Pakistan People’s Party was poised for a victory that would make Bhutto Prime Minister once again. After a campaign rally in Rawalpindi, a gunman fired at her car before detonating a bomb, killing himself and more than 20 bystanders. Bhutto was rushed to the hospital but soon succumbed to injuries suffered in the attack.
Benazir Bhutto left a deeply polarizing legacy. Her career has been celebrated as a triumph for women in the Muslim world and for the global fight against Islamic extremism.

Since the beginning of her career in the early 1980s, American singer and songwriter Madonna has had a social-cultural impact on the world through her recordings, attitude, clothing and lifestyle. Called the "Queen of Pop", Madonna is labeled by international authors as the greatest woman in music, as well as the most influential and iconic female recording artist of all time. Madonna is the first multimedia pop icon in history and professionals agree that she has become the world's biggest and most socially significant pop icon, as well as the most controversial.

Carmen Amaya was a Spanish Romani flamenco dancer and singer. She has been called "the greatest Spanish Romani dancer of her generation" and "the most extraordinary personality of all time in flamenco dance." She was the first female flamenco dancer to master footwork previously reserved for the best male dancers, due to its speed and intensity. She sometimes danced in high-waisted trousers as a symbol of her strong character.
Born, in abject poverty, Carmen Amaya started to dance at the age of four on the streets of her native Barcelona, accompanied by her father playing the guitar. By the time she was 23 she had become a star of Spanish cinema and soon after, the darling of Hollywood and Broadway.
The fire, grit, electricity, passion and “duende” (soul) of the Gypsy style which we associate with Flamenco is largely due to the contribution of Carmen Amaya. But, Amaya was also a pioneer. Before her, women did very little footwork. She changed the role of women from one of passive posture to masculine ferocity and virtuosity. She wore pants like a man and surpassed the men in the speed, complexity and attack of her footwork. Yet Amaya also embodied sensuality and expressiveness.
Even today she remains unequaled. She was a genius whose talent was matched, according to all accounts, by her generosity and goodness. Nobody before or after has managed to transmit such strong, almost electrical energy, such “duende”.
She will be forever identified with the passion of Spanish dance.

A Jewish American feminist, journalist, and social political activist who became nationally recognized as a leader and a spokeswoman for the American feminist movement in the late 1960s and early 1970s.
After graduating from Smith College in 1956, Steinem went to India on a scholarship. There she participated in nonviolent protests against government policy. In 1960 she began working as a writer and journalist in New York City. Steinem gained attention in 1963 with her article “I Was a Playboy Bunny,” which recounted her experience as a scantily clad waitress at Hugh Hefner’s Playboy Club. By 1968 Steinem’s work had become more overtly political. She began writing a column, “The City Politic,” for New York magazine. Her involvement in feminism intensified in 1968 when she attended a meeting of a radical feminist group, the Redstockings. Proud of her feminist roots—her paternal grandmother had served as president of the Ohio Women’s Suffrage Association from 1908 to 1911—Steinem founded the National Women’s Political Caucus in July 1971 with Betty Friedan, Bella Abzug, and Shirley Chisholm. That same year she began exploring the possibility of a new magazine for women, one that treated contemporary issues from a feminist perspective. The result was Ms. magazine, which first appeared as an insert in the December 1971 issue of New York. The following year the first stand-alone issue was published.
She helped to found the Women's Action Alliance, the National Women's Political Caucus, and Choice USA. She was the founding president of the Ms. Foundation for Women and helped create Take Our Daughters to Work Day. She recently co-founded the Women's Media Center and GreenStone Media. She has served on the board of trustees of Smith College, and was a member of the Beyond Racism Initiative, a comparative study of racial patterns in the U.S., South Africa, and Brazil. She has also co-produced a documentary on child abuse for HBO, and a feature film for Lifetime.
In 2013 Steinem was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

Musician, a business mogul, a feminist, a mother, and a brand whose cultural gravity seems to emanate not from any one of these talents but from all of them in concert.
Throughout her career, Beyoncé has sold over 100 million records worldwide, making her one of the world's best-selling music artists. She has won 22 Grammy Awards and is the most nominated woman in the award's history. In 2014, she became the highest-paid black musician in history and was listed among Time's 100 most influential people in the world for a second year in a row. That same year, Forbes declared Beyoncé to be the world’s most powerful celebrity, and she has leveraged her global brand in support of gender equality through her influential charity, the #BeyGood Project. She’s worked with a number of charities and has helped bring awareness to certain causes like Black Lives Matter, gender equality and marriage equality.
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An American professional tennis player. The Women's Tennis Association (WTA) ranked her world No. 1 in singles on eight separate occasions between 2002 and 2017. She reached the No. 1 ranking for the first time on July 8, 2002. On her sixth occasion, she held the ranking for 186 consecutive weeks, tying the record set by Steffi Graf. In total, she has been No. 1 for 319 weeks, which ranks third in the "Open Era" among female players behind Graf and Martina Navratilova.
Williams holds the most Grand Slam titles in singles, doubles, and mixed doubles combined among active players. Her 39 major titles puts her joint-third on the all-time list and second in the Open Era: 23 in singles, 14 in women's doubles, and two in mixed doubles. She is the most recent female player to have held all four Grand Slam singles titles simultaneously (2002–03 and 2014–15) and the third player to achieve this twice, after Rod Laver and Graf. She is also the most recent player to have won a Grand Slam title on each surface (hard, clay and grass) in one calendar year. She is also, together with her sister Venus, the most recent player to have held all four Grand Slam women's doubles titles simultaneously (2009–10).
Her total of 23 Grand Slam singles titles marks the record for the most Grand Slam wins in the Open Era, and is second on the all-time list behind Margaret Court . She has won an all-time record of 13 Grand Slam singles titles on hard court. Williams holds the Open Era record for most titles won at the Australian Open and shares the Open Era record for most titles won at the US Open with Chris Evert. She also holds the all-time record for the most women's singles matches won at majors with 331 matches. She has also won four Olympic gold medals, one in women's singles and three in women's doubles—an all-time record shared with her sister, Venus.
Earning almost $29 million in prize money and endorsements, Williams was the highest paid female athlete in 2016. She repeated this feat in 2017 when she was the only woman on Forbes' list of the 100 highest paid athletes with $27 million in prize money and endorsements.

Lady Gaga is an American singer, songwriter, and actress. She is known for her unconventionality and provocative work, as well as visual experimentation.
Having sold 27 million albums and 146 million singles as of January 2016, Gaga is one of the best-selling music artists in history. Her achievements include several Guinness World Records, six Grammys, three Brit Awards, and an award from the Songwriters Hall of Fame and the Council of Fashion Designers of America. Gaga has been declared Billboard's Artist of the Year and included among Forbes's power and earnings rankings.
Gaga has been often regarded as a trailblazer for sometimes utilizing controversy to bring attention to various issues. Time placed Gaga on their All-Time 100 Fashion Icons List, stating: "Lady Gaga is just as notorious for her outrageous style as she is for her pop hits.
She is known for her philanthropy and social activism, including LGBT rights, and for her non-profit organization, the Born This Way Foundation, which focuses on promoting youth empowerment and combating bullying.

An American actress. She played a number of small roles in films and on television before obtaining recognition for her leading role in the film Brown's Requiem. Her breakthrough came when she starred as Zoe Bean on the WB sitcom Zoe, Duncan, Jack and Jane, and as Cecile Caldwell in the cult film Cruel Intentions. Blair continued to find success with the comedies Legally Blonde and The Sweetest Thing , and achieved international fame with her portrayal of Liz Sherman in the big-budget fantasy films Hellboy and Hellboy II: The Golden Army. In 2010, Blair narrated the audiobook The Diary of Anne Frank, earning a nomination for the Grammy Award for Best Spoken Word Album for Children.

Thank you, Selma Blair, for sharing your courageous journey through life with MS, for bringing awareness to this illness, for spreading hope to those also suffering, and for being an inspiration to so many. Sending love and positive energy to you and the millions of others fighting the MS battle.
Selma Blair made her first red carpet appearance on Sunday at the Vanity Fair Oscars Party after revealing her MS diagnosis in October of 2018.
She has opened up about her struggles with multiple sclerosis stating "I’m happy, and if I can help anyone be more comfortable in their skin, it’s more than I’ve ever done before."
Blair has posted openly about her health struggles and successes on social media. "There is a truth with neurogedenerative brain disease. It is uncomfortable," Blair, 46, began in an Instagram post. "It is a stadium of uncontrollable anxiety at times. Going out, being sociable holds a heavy price. My brain is on fire. I am freezing. We feel alone with it even though the loving support has been a god send and appreciated.
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Taylor Swift is an American singer-songwriter. As one of the world's leading contemporary recording artists, she is known for narrative songs about her personal life, which have received widespread media coverage.
Swift is one of the best-selling music artists of all time, having sold more than 50 million albums—including 27.8 million in the US—and 150 million single downloads. As a songwriter, she has received awards from the Nashville Songwriters Association and the Songwriters Hall of Fame, and was included in Rolling Stone's 100 Greatest Songwriters of All Time in 2015. She is also the recipient of 10 Grammys, one Emmy, 23 Billboard Music Awards, and 12 Country Music Association Awards, and she holds six Guinness World Records. She is one of twelve women to appear in Time's 100 most influential people in the world at least three times (2010, 2015, 2019), and Forbes' lists of top-earning women in music (2011–2015), 100 most powerful women (2015), and Celebrity 100 (2016). Her inclusion in the third of these made her the youngest woman on the list, and she ranked first in Celebrity 100.
Swift was ranked Forbes magazine's highest paid celebrity under 30 in 2012, beating out Justin Bieber, Rihanna and Lady Gaga with earnings of $57 million. The following year, the musician shared some of her fortune to help others, funding the $4 million Taylor Swift Education Center at the Country Music Hall of Fame in Nashville.
Her new music video featuring Brendon Urie was viewed 65.2 million times in the first 24 hours of being released, setting a new Vevo record.