I'm proud to be female - women are a group so empowered that we let very little stand in our way. Or at least that's what I've started to believe here lately.
Sadly though, women are still competing to be equal to men. We see this through inequities in salaries and the pink tax, but what about the more implicit parts of being a woman? One thing I've noticed is that strong women do not get much representation in Hollywood. Us normal ladies are told to push through what society expects of us as women, but we're just shown girls that submit to the wills of the men in their lives via our entertainment. This leaves us with very few examples to model ourselves after. These 10 women, however, perfectly exemplify ways to break barriers to run the world as Queen Bey declared we should.
1. Olivia Pope
On "Scandal," Olivia Pope is the person you want to know. Not only is she amazing at her job, but she is a black woman working for a conservative president.
2. Jane Villanueva
As the title of the show, "Jane the Virgin," suggests, Jane avoids societal and peer pressure to have sex before marriage while also pursuing her dream of being a published romance author.
3. Daphne Vasquez
Many of the "Switched at Birth" plotlines revolved around Daphne's struggles as a deaf teenager that was switched at birth and raised in a poor Latino family rather than an upper class white family. I'm pretty sure that goes against every societal expectation ever in existence.
4. Lorelai Gilmore
Anyone who has ever seen even just one episode of "Gilmore Girls" knows Lorelai Gilmore doesn't even fit on the social norm spectrum. She ran away from her parents' mansion as a teen mom and raised her daughter in a shed at an inn until they got up on their feet.
5. Rachel Green
Rachel's introduction on "Friends" is about as untraditional as it gets: she runs into Central Perk in her wedding dress as she leaves her fiancé at the altar. She abandons her upper class lifestyle to build her own life from the bottom up. Very rarely does a woman do that in either real life or on TV.
6. Jane Bingum
As she struggles to impersonate the lawyer she has become, "Drop Dead Diva's" Jane Bingum drifts further and further away from the vain model she once was. Her character illustrates that there's nothing wrong with being an intelligent woman and indulging in the glamorous parts of life at the same time.
7. Mia Thermopolis
In the first "Princess Diaries" movie, Mia really is just a normal, flirty high school girl. However, when she begins training to be a queen in the second movie, she does not allow her new country to force her into marriage with someone she doesn't love. Additionally, she uses much of her clout to empower the young women she meets throughout the film.
8. Dr. Temperance Brennan
Dr. Brennan proves that women can be just as smart, if not smarter, than men. In almost every episode of "Bones," it is her discovery that leads to solving the crime.
9. Robin Scherbatsky
Robin doesn't buy into the marriage and kids path to happiness. Instead, she focuses on her career and discovering who she wants to be throughout her "How I Met Your Mother" storyline. Robin only gets married when she's truly in love, and even then she maintains her status as "one of the guys" rather than a lady.
10. Leslie Knope
In addition to teaching a group of young girls, the Pawnee Goddesses, how to be BA women like she is, Leslie Knope from "Parks and Recreation" sees no barriers on the basis of gender and is always pushing through the glass ceiling to assert herself as a powerful human being.
What are you waiting for with this powerful roster of ladies in the media to look up to? Embrace your quirks and personality!
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