Glamorous Achievement: A Definite Do

NEW YORK

The annual Glamour Women of the Year awards leave one simultaneously inspired by the extraordinary accomplishments of the winners and fraught with anxiety that one's personal list of achievements amounts to: Remembered Mom's birthday. Paid bills on time.

One of the honorees at last week's ceremony at Carnegie Hall was 10-year-old Nujood Mohammed Ali, who, as a penniless child bride in Yemen, won a divorce from an abusive husband more than three times her age. Her speech about her dreams and goals was deeply moving. But as the audience stood and applauded the miraculous strength and will of this little girl, one could be forgiven for wondering: What does this have to do with a magazine best known for fashion do's and don'ts? The answer, of course, would be everything.

These annual awards honor the work of women who have influenced our culture in areas ranging from art and politics to human rights. While the awards celebrate a particular facet of a person's life, the introductions invariably paint a broader picture of the recipient. If she is perceived as so committed to the serious work of human rights as to be practically humorless, some levity is injected into the brief telling of her biography. If she has a reputation for sharp elbows and a fighting spirit, then her dedication to being a loyal friend and fun-loving girl's girl will be given a full airing.

But the subtext running through each award is the notion that style, glamour, fashion and all its variations can be part of a serious life. One would think that such a declaration would be unnecessary. But we remain a culture that is quick to declare any conversation about style as shallow, any acknowledgment of a woman's appearance as sexist and any attention to the semiotics of attire as undignified.

So although the Women of the Year awards are meant to be a celebration of accomplishment, not style, the fact that they are given out under the auspices of Glamour serves as a license for serious women to mention the unmentionable: Fashion can be fun, confidence-building, lucrative and symbolic. The good works of the evening's honorees are cloaked in sequins and taffeta, and for a couple of hours, style and accomplishment are declared, if not natural bedfellows, at least mutually tolerant.

The evening also helps to expand the definition of "glamour" -- that mysterious ability to charm and fascinate. Any woman invited to walk onto that stage has, in essence, been proclaimed glamorous, whether it is Maureen Chiquet, the chief executive of Chanel, or the Olympic gold medalists in beach volleyball, Misty May-Treanor and Kerri Walsh. An intrepid mind for business is as glamorous as athleticism.

Honoree Kara Walker, the artist famous for her black paper silhouettes that explore race and gender, makes provocation glamorous. And the female winners of the Nobel Peace Prize, celebrated for banding together to empower women, make intelligence and tenacity as stylish and exciting as the runway trends that the magazine also details.

During the ceremony, primatologist Jane Goodall and media entrepreneur Tyra Banks served as aesthetic extremes. Goodall, who was given a lifetime achievement award, focused her remarks on the need for humans to be more respectful of the planet. She wore her hair in the same offhanded, loose ponytail that has become her signature. If she had put on lipstick, it went unnoticed. But she was wearing a long skirt and a gay blouse and in her own way had gussied up for the evening. This was earth-mother, my-carbon-footprint-is-smaller-than-yours glamour.

On the other end, Banks accepted her award wearing a clinging, floor-length black jersey gown, with pinup girl hair and Hollywood eyes. She was Banks the Sports Illustrated stunner, the raging beauty who talks about her cellulite . . . and the entrepreneur who created an empire out of a runway strut.

And when actress and human rights advocate Nicole Kidman arrived for the ceremony, she was a creaseless wraith in an ivory L'Wren Scott slink, carrying a metallic Dries Van Noten handbag. The brand names were announced in e-mails from publicists. A red carpet is a red carpet, even when it is shared with three Nobel laureates, two Olympians and at least one MacArthur Foundation "genius grant" recipient. It takes a village to glam up a star, and inhabitants must be thanked with shout-outs.

The ladies of politics were situated nicely in the middle of the glamour spectrum. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was honored in part for persuading the United Nations to recognize rape as a weapon of war. Rice accepted her award wearing a chocolate brown and gold sleeveless gown that revealed the payoff of her disciplined workout regimen: those arms, those biceps, those impressive 54-year-old guns flexing as she stood onstage holding her award!

Her hair, twisted into an updo, was as spectacularly shiny as shampoo commercial tresses. Frankly, she might have been glowing -- in an "I'm going back to Cali" sort of way. And as she spoke about human rights and overcoming old, racial wounds, she also noted: "I've read Glamour magazine since I was 12 and I continue to do so."

Sen. Hillary Clinton's award for being a trailblazer was the grand finale of the evening. Her hair looked longer since her days as a presidential candidate. And she was not wearing a pantsuit -- although she mentioned her special affection for Glamour because the magazine liked her extensive and colorful collection of them. Instead, she wore a shirtwaist evening gown that, under the spotlights, had the sheen of a coffee bean. It had a full skirt and three-quarter sleeves and was paired with a matching necklace of gemstones.

As a surprise, Clinton, and the entire audience, was serenaded by "American Idol" winner David Cook, who can apparently claim the senator as one of his biggest fans even though "he did get more votes than I did," she said.

Gov. Sarah Palin did not make the list of Glamour honorees, despite her history-making spot on the Republican ticket. Her absence had nothing to do with either her shopping habits or her constant cooking of moose chili. The honorees, featured in the December issue of the magazine, were revealed just before this month's election. No one on a presidential ticket or married to one of the candidates -- Michelle Obama or Cindy McCain -- was included to avoid the appearance of partisanship, said Glamour editor in chief Cindi Leive.

In the past, liberals and conservatives, Democrats and Republicans, have been on the list of honorees. There have been women who were celebrated for shattering records and achieving milestones, only later to fall into infamy, such as Marion Jones. There have been women who have stirred controversy such as Anita Hill and Army Pfc. Jessica Lynch. And those who have devolved from culturally influential celebrities into caricatures, such as Madonna and Britney Spears.

But we expect that kind of fluidity. People change and so do circumstances. But the beauty of these awards is that what constitutes glamour changes -- and grows -- as well.