One of the most inspiring, emotional and entertaining events that we SnL partners attend yearly is the Glamour Magazine Women of the Year Awards, held in New York the first week of November.  Every year, we come back with a renewed faith in the “power and influence of females” and the extraordinary impact that women have in making a difference in the world. The audience includes the usual “VIPs and influencers” but also, a balcony full of young girls who are invited to hear and experience what women before them have accomplished. One of the best things about the event for us is the sheer element of surprise of who will be honored and who will be presenting the honors.  Although Glamour releases their annual Women of the Year issue before the event, we have always avoided it so we could sit there and gasp when one amazing, awe- inspiring celebrity after another walks out on stage. The oooh’s and ahhh’s are thrilling and have become a part of our tradition every year for the past 7 years…

Except for this year. Something overcame us. We couldn’t resist knowing who we were going to see. It was fun to sit before the event and talk about the history of that person, what we loved about them, why they would be honored and who could potentially present the honors? What has Chelsea Handler done (other than make a hell of a lot of people laugh) to be honored? We commiserated about the horrific ordeal that Gabriele Giffords has gone through, the amazing success of Arianna Huffington’s “Huffington Post” when she sold it this year to AOL for $315 million, how excited we were to learn more about “Facebook Girl”- the woman who helped overturn the ruler of Egypt, what will Jennifer Lopez wear, and what an incredible kick ass woman is Gloria Steinem… we wondered how Debbie Harry sounds after all these years and what the Bush women have been doing to be honored as a threesome. We didn’t know who Cindy Sherman was, didn’t know much about Lea Michelle, nor had we heard of Withelma “T” Ortiz-Macey.  But we sure do now, and you can too – at Glamour.com

Even though we broke our tradition, there were still lots of surprises.  We still oooh’d and ahh’d when presenters Condoleezza Rice, Jessica Alba, Diane Sawyer, Jennifer Aniston, Barbara Walters, Donatella Versace and Anita Hill amongst others came out. We still laughed, cried and mostly were awestruck and inspired to be better, stronger and supportive women to each other.

Will we open the Women of the Year issue before the event next year? Guess we’ll see, but at least we’ll know our level of inspiration will remain unchanged. We still walked away feeling like we can do anything we want if we set our minds to it. In the words of Chelsea Handler “You really can do whatever it is you want to do. You just have to get out there and F*%#CKng do it.”

Jennifer Aniston introducing Chelsea Handler

 

Chelsea Handler speaking at the eventÂ

Jennifer Lopez on the Glamour red carpet

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