As a former model, she was the first African American to appear on the cover of Sports Illustrated's swimsuit edition. More recently though, Tyra began a movement to encourage women to be, what she calls, "fiercely real." Tyra works hard to promote positive body image and self-acceptance by spreading the word to audiences through her talk show and non-profit campaigns, such as her camp for young girls called "T-Zone." Tyra personifies pure beauty, inside and out, and is a true insperation.
Crystal Renn
Crystal is a beautiful "plus-sized" model who has been featured in Vogue, Elle, and Harper's Bazaar. At the beginning of her career, she was told she would need to lose almost a third of her total body weight, which eventually triggered a health crisis. After that, she purposely gained 70 pounds and re-emerged in the fashion industry as a healthy size 12. She also has written an insperational book, "Hungry: A Young Model's Story of Appetite, Ambition and the Ultimate Embrace of Curves," about her experiences.
Georgia O'Keeffe lived from 1887 to 1986 and was a very talented painter, as well as a very independent and ambitious woman during a time when it was popular for women not to be. She was known for paintings of flowers, rocks, shells, animal bones, and landscapes, often transforming her subject matter into powerful abstract images. She challenged the boundaries of modern American artistic style and found great success in her career as an artist, being one of few women to have gained entry to this level of professional influence at the time. Her husband, photographer Alfred Stieglitz, was so stunned by her unique and unconventional beauty, that he took hundreds of pictures of her and claimed her to be "his muse." The picture of her to the right was taken in 1918 by Stieglitz.
Janis JoplinJanis Joplin was a pioneer in the male-dominated rock music scene of the late 1960s, influencing generations of musicians to come. While attending high school as a teenager she was mostly shunned by the other kids. She explained that she was a misfit during that time: she didn't hate African-Americans and she would have rather painted or read a book than engage in typical teenage activities. She was feircely independent and rebellious; she had tattoos, she wore colored streaks in her hair, she often didn't wear a bra, and she posed nude for a photoshoot during a time when it was still generally taboo. Unfortunately, Janis died at the age of 27 from a heroin overdose. But during her short amount of time in the music industry, she helped pave the road for future "misfit" female musicians.
