Who is Your Favorite Role Model or Idol?

Having a role model especially as a young woman is important because young women need to admire a woman whom they feel are smart, caring and beautiful. Role models and idols are like superheroes in a way; we know they don’t really have super powers, but we like to think they do. Every since I was a young girl, I’ve admired people for various reasons; I admired the character Clair Huxtable  from The Cosby Show because she was smart, reliable and caring but she was also a strong and beautiful mother that played a dominant role in her family. Creatively, Lorraine Hansbury was my idol, she lived in Chicago just like me, she was a writer and enjoyed reading  just like I do and she always spoke her mind. She lived in a time where being a lesbian wasn’t considered “cool” and she was also featured in Vogue magazine after the success of her play Raisin in the Sun which highlighted her childhood growing up on the Southside of Chicago. Even though I admired her career and social awareness efforts, throughout my own life, my role models have  changed to fit my own personal agenda but there has always been one woman that has struck me a an idol and role model and that is my grandmother.

My grandmother is not famous, nor did she have the luxury of having higher education, as a matter of fact the highest grade she completed was the sixth grade. My grandmother was born in 1923 in Columbus, Georgia and was raised by different family members and friends because both of her parents died. I remember her telling me she had very little recollection of her mother but she did remember her always making her biscuits in the morning. She had many jobs while living in Georgia; she was a nanny, a cook, a washer woman, a maid and she was a photographer. She would tell me she would do any job she could do just to keep a job because working gave her independence. Eventually she married my grandfather and migrated to Chicago where I was born and raised. I always liked listening to my grandmother talk about the “old” days because it was different from the history books I was reading in class; it was more personal. There a few things I learned from her that I now cherish to this day and one of those things is washing my clothes by hand. It sounds primitive but it isn’t that bad. My grandmother would give me a washing board and bin and make me wash clothes, towels and sheets and hang them up to dry outside. I would always hate this because we had a washer and dryer and clothes are so heavy when they are wet! I would hate the process  I had to do to wash clothes by hand, and my friends would laugh at me when they saw me outside hanging clothes but it helped me as I got older because when it’s cold outside, or even if my machine breaks I can still have clean clothes. Another lesson and skill she taught me was sewing. She would teach me how to thread and stitch clothes and tears in my jeans to make them look new again which helped me in my later years when I wanted to wear something or take in a dress- it was the little things like gardening, sewing and washing that help mold me to be the young lady I am today. So my grandmother is my role model.

Now my idol is Michelle Obama. She is just fierce! She is smart, beautiful, and strong and she seems like a warm mother and a great supporter to the President. I really admire the fact she is really smart. She doesn’t hide behind the president and in fact I can honestly say if she ran for president I would vote for her. Plus I like her fashion- she’s like urban suburban mom cool.