So I came across these profiles on Elle.com of 10 of the most powerful women in Washington DC. A political person, I was pumped to read about these women and how they got to where they are. I read about two or three and found it a bit weird how it's substance, substance, substance, then all of a sudden, talking about shoes.
While I am all about shoes (I've used them as inspiration for one of my first blog posts, see here) and fashion (I have an automatic renewal on my Vogue subscription), the way these articles read seemed a bit, well, odd.
These profiles are being used to inaugurate the Style section of Elle.com, so I guess I should expect purses and shoes to intersect with drive and intellect.
Nonetheless, if you can get past the editing weirdness, you'll discover some pretty awesome women you don't get to hear about every day. Maybe some day, your profile will be included.
Click here to read.
Here's a sample profile:
Lovely & Amazing: The Women in DC Power List
For the inaugural of ELLE's new Style section, Lisa DePaulo interviews 10 of the capital’s shiniest stars
Linda Daschle: The Persuader
In a city where lobbyists are the lifeblood (and often considered ruthless), Daschle stands out not only for commitment to her job—when her husband, Tom Daschle, the former Senate majority leader, was in power, she fiercely hung on to her career—but also for her extracurricular activities. While she’s best known as the top woman lobbyist in DC (representing the mighty airline industry; one of her first jobs, before being crowned Miss Kansas, was as an FAA weather watcher), Beltway locals love her for the tireless work she does for the Ford Theatre and the N Street Settlement House (for abused women), among other causes. “My wife has a special place in her heart for women who have had to struggle to survive and have not had many breaks in life,” Tom Daschle says. As for the Miss Kansas thing, she played the piano. Well.
Why she’s devoted to N Street Village, a shelter for abused or addicted women and their children: “It’s one of those miracle places that help women get their lives back, and when I was introduced to it fourteen years ago and met some of these women, it was one of those moments when I said, No matter how busy I am. . .’ But my relationship with them actually started with a horrible tragedy. In my own family. I had a grandmother who was murdered. And this happened in rural Oklahoma. You would never ever think someone who just lived on her farm would ever, you know, meet such a tragic end of life . . . It was a migrant worker; we don’t know why. This was a way that I thought I could honor my grandmother.”
Why she’s equally devoted to the National Organization on Fetal Alcohol Syndrome: Kevin Costner! When Costner made Dances with Wolves in South Dakota (her husband Tom’s home state), he found out about the devastation caused by fetal alcohol syndrome. “No one really was paying attention to this issue, so Tom and Kevin” started the organization, Linda says.
How she got from Oklahoma to Washington: She lived in 10 small towns in Oklahoma, then in Kansas. (Her father was a minister, “so we moved a lot.”) Then she was crowned Miss Kansas in 1976 and sent to the Miss America pageant …
Who she lost to: “Ugh, now we’re going back 34…we actually don’t touch that anymore. It’s kinda like…” The statute of limitations has expired? Right, “I have not watched the pageant for years and years and it’s kind of hard for me to believe I was ever associated, or—I don’t want to say it that way because for a young woman, I mean, from Kansas, it truly was a great experience for me and I gained a lot, you know, whether it was self-confidence or whatever. But it was Dorothy Benham.”
What she wanted to be when she grew up: “An air traffic controller. That was what my career goal was when I competed in the pageant, which I think the judges thought was a little kooky."
Her first job in the aviation industry (before becoming its top lobbyist): A weather watcher for the FAA. “Every hour I took weather measurements to determine precipitation, what the winds were. And all the information was put in a report and sent out to pilots.” (This was pre-modern computers.)
On being a lobbyist: “People think it’s all just running to Capitol Hill and getting an earmark.”
It’s not?!: “Right now my passion is to get GPS-like capabilities in the cockpit. If the Prius can have GPS, I don’t understand why a commercial aircraft can’t.” They don’t already? “Well, I don’t want to oversimplify it, but ours is much more sophisticated and much more precise. And it’s interactive, because we’re still going to have a live air traffic controller at the other end, communicating with the pilots.” Not that woman’s voice? “Oh no.”
Her personal style: Her daughter in law Jill Daschle describes it as part Jackie Kennedy, part Grace Kelly, all refined elegance. “For me, nothing is better than just a great dress and a pair of pumps,” Linda says. “And that’s it. I don’t know how you define classic Washington. But I would say my style runs probably a little bit more classic. I recently saw a bunch of old pictures of Grace Kelly, and I thought, I could wear every one of those.”
Where she shops in DC: Nieman’s, Saks, Nordstrom’s (“since it expanded”). “But I also don’t mind at all a Banana Republic or a J. Crew.”
Her signature: Black patent pumps.
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