Carrie Bradshaw - Wonderful Woman No. 20

Carrie Bradshaw played by Sarah Jessica Parker in the TV Series Sex and the City
Fictional American Writer

The main reason for my inclusion of Carrie Bradshaw as a Wonderful Woman is the enviable way this woman is kept in $400 shoes by writing about who she has or has not been sleeping with at the time. Where does a girl sign up for this job? Count me in.

What do I know about men? All I have is a bunch of failed relationships..
Carrie Bradshaw

My hero!
Alison, A Wonderful Woman

I must confess, watching Sex and the City and following the lives of the four main characters; Carrie, Miranda, Charlotte and Samantha, was always something of a cathartic experience for me. I think many women can identify with at least one of these women and the scenarios they faced during the show. That's what made it popular, it was like it just got us, single, modern women.

The show was made between 1998 and 2004, there were two feature films (I only saw the first, didn't make much of it so haven't bothered with the second). It was a talking point with my girl friends, something we loved watching together while drinking cocktails, something we laughed at, cried at and in places winced with embarrassment at. It didn't change our lives and when it was over, it was just over but for a time, Carrie... in fact all four of the girls were pretty darn wonderful to us.

Emmeline Pankhurst - Wonderful Woman No. 19

Emmeline Pankhurst - 1858-1928
British Political Activist & Leader of the British Suffragette Movement

Isn't worrying that we live in a society where it is likely that girls and young women will have a greater knowledge of The Kardishans than of The Pankhursts?

There are a great many things to say about Emmeline Pankhurst and her daughters Christobel, Sylvia and Adela. They were women with a firm goal in mind, fearless in how they would achieve it and never faltering in their determination - these facts alone make them wonderful women to me.

Emmeline Pankhurst was born in urban Moss Sides, Manchester to politically active parents. She was educated in Paris. She was a socialist, a feminist and a humanist, she spent time working as a Poor Law Guardian in Manchester Workhouses, overwhelmed with sadness and anger at the conditions it's inhabitants lived in. She married a barrister (Richard Pankhurst), who was known for his support of women's right to vote. It was he who encouraged her to become involved with the Women's Franchise League, which advocated suffrage for women. After his death, Emmeline set up an all women organisation, the Women's Social and Political Union.

Headed by Emmeline, the Women's Social and Political Union became the front line militant organisation campaigning for Votes for Women. The organisation used the slogan Deeds Not Words, it saw activists carrying out acts of violence, throwing rocks at windows - including that of the Prime Minister, a catalogue of arson attacks, criminal damage and numerous marches demanding that women be given the right to have a say in who governed their country.

She shaped an idea of women for our time; she shook society into a new pattern from which there could be no going back.
Time Magazine

This action saw many members of the Women's Social and Political Union, including Emmeline herself, in prison. Still their dedication to the cause was unyielding, hunger strikes were a common tactic used in prison. Still the British Government refused to allow a woman the right to chose their leader.

Justice and judgment lie often a world apart.
Emmeline Pankhurst

During the First World War, Emmeline felt that the threat from Germany was so great that she called a truce with the government. She even spoke and campaigned to encourage men to join the forces and for women to rally with the war effort. In post-war Britain, the action of The Suffragettes and the work of women during the war could not be ignored.

In 1918, The Representation of the People Act allowed women over the age of 30 the right to vote. This still did not make women equal to men, they had the right to vote from the age of 21, full electoral equality did not come into place until 1928. Even so, the work of Emmeline, her daughters and all other suffragettes was recognised, they achieved their goal and made Britain a fairer, more equal place for women.

As someone who until the age of twelve only knew a female Prime Minister in the United Kingdom, the way life was for women in Britain before the successes of Emmeline and the other suffragettes is unfathomable.



Unthinkably, there are still countries in the world today that fail to allow half of the human race a say in who governs them. In 2011, it was finally announced that women of Saudi Arabia will be given the right to vote (though in a country where women require the permission of a male relative to see a doctor, it remains to be seen if this will be a fair vote), activists there have been campaigning for 20 years on women's right to drive, guardianship and voting issues. Also notably, in The Lebanon though some women can vote, proof of education is required for women but not for men.

All women who have suffered and strived to make the world a fairer place for other women deserve to be included as wonderful women, Emmeline Pankhurst is here as a representation of them all.

Betty Boo - Wonderful Woman No. 18

Betty Boo - Born 1970
British Singer, Songwriter and Pop-Rap Artist

I remember the Christmas of 1990 extremely well. I was 12 years old and on holiday in Lanzarote with my family. We spent Christmas in the sun every year, this had many advantages but a disadvantage was that my siblings and I received only a few presents on the day (light ones that wouldn't have inflicted the cost of excess baggage on my parents). That year, I received a yellow Sony Walkman (which I thought was amazing) with two cassettes; One was Madonna's Immaculate Collection (which I loved) and the other was Betty Boo's Boomania.

She's quite lovely.
Owain, A Wonderful Man

Boomania was actually a great album for a twelve year old girl to listen to. The lyrics were empowering and were never overtly sexual. It was no seminal hip-hop album by any means but maybe a good introduction to certain sounds. I particularly liked the song Hey DJ (I can't dance to the music you're playing) and, you know, thinking back, it may have been a little ahead of it's time - when you consider the recent commercial successes of the likes of Jessie J and Cher Lloyd. The album also used samples of Martha Reeves and The Vandellas, The Velvelettes and Sly and The Family Stone.

I learned the words to every song on that album and I played the cassette until it would play no more... for the time that it did Betty Boo and my Sony Walkman were both pretty wonderful.

Barbara Jackson - Wonderful Woman No. 17

Barbara Jackson - 1936-2008
British Actress and Singer

Born in industrial Salford in the north of England, Barbara started performing in local amateur dramatics groups from an early age. She always longed for life as a professional entertainer and to travel. At the age of 21, after having been working as a machinist for a local mill, Barbara's talent on stage was finally spotted. She became a professional singer and actress and enjoyed a forty year career in show business.

Barbara travelled across the country in various shows. She also spent some time working in the U.S.A. in an Old Time Music Hall production. She made countless appearances on British television, including walking the cobbles of Coronation Street (which was not unlike the Salford streets of where she had grown-up). She also appeared at the London Palladium on more the one occasion, this was something she was immensely proud of.

Barbara Jackson was also my Great-Aunt.

She was a woman I always looked up to and admired. I, too, performed on stage from an early age, I was in the chorus line of my first pantomime at the age of five. I always wanted to be on stage, for that to be my career and I lapped up hearing stories of Aunty's adventures. I studied performing arts, much to the joy of Aunty (who had no children of her own), she lived in the Midlands at the time and I would often write to her and tell her what I had been learning about and what pieces I had performed. In my early twenties, I too fulfilled my ambition of becoming a professional actress. I spent some time touring the UK. Aunty kind of mentored me through my auditions and we spoke on the phone every Sunday, she would sip gin and tonic while I would tell her about the theatres and the cast and my performance. Sometimes, she would send little cards with notes of encouragement. She had retired some time before, I think she loved hearing about my life in show business and felt pleased to be able to give me some tutorship and encouragement, I also felt she was very proud of me.

She became very ill in the mid-2000s. She had always been such a glamorous woman and to see her frail and infirm, and losing her faculties was incredibly distressing.

At her funeral in 2008, we, her family and friends gave her a fitting tribute by singing There's No Business Like Show Business, I think she would have loved that.

Barbara Jackson, Aunty, was a wonderful woman and one I spent so much of my life in awe of and inspired by... and I miss her very much.

Debbie Harry - Wonderful Woman No. 16

Debbie Harry - Born 1945
American Singer, Songwriter and Actress


I am one of a generation that cannot remember life before Blondie.

The sounds of the new wave band, Blondie, fronted by Debbie Harry really shaped my formative years. Heart of Glass is really the song that I remember being played constantly by various members of my family as a child. Somewhere there is grainy cine-camera footage of me singing and dancing to One Way or Another, where I can be no more than six years old. Over the years, my parents and I have suffered intense musical differences, Blondie has always been a group that we have agreed on the greatness of.

The group formed in 1976, before I was even born. Two years later, I came screaming into the world and they released their album Parallel Lines, which included the global hit, Heart of Glass. By the time I was learning to walk and talk, Eat the Beat was released and achieved platinum disc success. When my little sister was born, Autoamerican was released, featuring the singles Call Me, Rapture, and Follow Me. During my time at primary school, Debbie enjoyed a successful solo career. And while I was at high school, Blondie introduced me to the concept of remixes with the album Remixed Remade Remodeled (as a club goer, a club promoter and a DJ, remixes have been fairly important since). As I reached adulthood, Blondie reformed and recorded a couple of singles, No Exit and Maria.

This has been the music that formed the soundtrack to much of my life.

The influences of punk, reggae, hip hop and, in particular, disco sit well with my tastes in music to this day. I can as happily enjoy any of the Blondie albums now as I could in earlier years.

I have also been a huge fan of Debbie's style and image. I have had the white blonde hair on a number of occasions, as well as trying to emulate the nonchalant expression. She is beautiful and stylish but the image is more about the attitude than anything else and I love that about her.

When I was younger, I wasted ten years wanting to be Debbie Harry
Kirsty Young, Another Wonderful Woman

In addition to her many musical success Debbie has enjoyed an acting career, including appearing in more than 30 film roles and many television appearances. Most memorable, for me, was her appearance as the calculating mother in the 1988 version of Hairspray, she was fabulously over the top, comical and entertaining.

Debbie is also a dedicated charity worker, in particular, raising funds for HIV and AIDS awareness.

Debbie continues to be a woman I feel influenced by and to me she is truly, truly wonderful.

Jessica Mitford - Wonderful Woman No. 15

Jessica Mitford - 1917-1996
British-American Author, Journalist, Singer and Political Activist

Added to the album by a wonderful woman called Claire.

After publishing the initial photographs of the album to my Facebook page, my friend Claire commented that she would like to add some suggestions of wonderful women herself. This was a fantastic idea and opened up the album to other people, at the current count there are 173 pictures in the album, mostly of women suggested by friends and friends of friends. Claire's initiative to make her own suggestions has really turned this into a project for me, which I am thoroughly pleased about.

The one draw-back of the album being full of other people's suggestions, is that I find myself writing a blog based on their female influences rather than my own. I can only hope that, in some way, I manage to write something relevant to how the women suggested have effected the lives of those who suggested them.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Jessica Mitford was born into an aristocratic family and was raised in country houses of rural Britain. Although well read, Jessica and the other infamous Mitford sisters had no formal education, as their mother did not believe young ladies should be schooled. The family were well-known British supporters of Hitler and her sister, Diana, married the country's most renowned fascist, Oswald Mosley. Jessica, though, rejected the idea of fascism and, indeed, her upper-class, privileged place in society, she became a supporter of communism (she has been referred to as the Red Sheep of the family).

After eloping to Spain at the age of nineteen, Jessica and her husband Esmond Romilly (the nephew of Winston Churchill) spent a short time living in London before immigrating to the U.S.A in 1939 (she later became an American citizen). When the second World War started, Esmond enrolled in the Canadian Air Force, he was declared missing in action after an air raid over Germany in 1941. During the war, Jessica worked and in 1943, she met her second husband, Robert Treuhaft (an America Civil Rights Lawyer).

In the years after the war, Jessica spent time working in California (where she had now settled) for a civil rights group. She and Robert were involved in many civil rights campaigns, including the infamous campaign to stop Willie McGee receiving the death penalty (his story later the inspiration for Harper Lee's To Kill A Mocking Bird).

For sometime, Jessica and Robert were active members of the American Communist Party, they left the party in 1958, having become disillusioned with the notion of communism after its development in the Soviet Union. Jessica's political attitudes remained firmly on the left, she wrote many essays on socialism and society.

Jessica's first book, was published in 1960, a memoir of life growing up in her aristocratic English home. In much of her work, Jessica was scathing of the class-system in the United Kingdom and, indeed, of her own family's values.

Jessica spent some time in the 1960s and 70s working as an investigative journalist. This saw her caught up in the civil unrest of the time, witnessing first hand a rally headed by Martin Luther King and subsequently being barricaded inside a church as the Ku-Klux-Klan attacked.

In addition to all of the above, Jessica also had a brief career as a singer under the pseudonym Decca and the Dectones, recording two albums and appearing at a number of live events.

All in all, a formidable woman! A great suggestion from Claire, I hope I have managed to fit in all the reasons Claire considers her wonderful.

My most influential writer, without a doubt, is Jessica Mitford. When my great-aunt gave me Hons and Rebels when I was 14, she instantly became my heroine... I love the way she never outgrew some of her adolescent traits, remaining true to her politics – she was a self-taught socialist – throughout her life. I think I've read everything she wrote. I even called my daughter [Jessica] after her.
J.K. Rowling, Another Wonderful Woman

Louise Brooks - Wonderful Woman No. 14

Louise Brooks - 1906-1985
American Actress and Dancer

For a long time, I have had something of an obsession with the 1920s and in particular flapper girls. Louise Brooks is the personification of the flapper for me and that is why she is featured as one of my wonderful women. It is rather more about the imagery she creates and my love of the roaring 20s fashion, style and attitude, than about her personally.

I hope that is an acceptable reason for her inclusion.

Louise had a wonderful career and an interesting personal life but I cannot claim to be an expert on her, so please, if you wish to find out a little more about her, have a gander of her Wikipedia page (it really does make an interesting read): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louise_Brooks

Most beautiful dumb girls think they are smart and get away with it, because other people, on the whole, aren't much smarter.
Louise Brooks