#ashlist: Eight Women Who Are Killing It

I could go on and on and on about all of my girl crushes of the moment. There's Tina Fey, who coined the term "Mean Girl" and invented the idea of women being nice to each other, and who is now coming out with yet another TV show about a woman who is awesome. There's Kristen Gillibrand, who's leading the feminist movement within the Senate. And Anna Wintour, who recently displayed a sense of humour in poking fun at the Met Gala, and a sense of enlightenment by admitting that fashion has often been guilty of being too narrow-minded. And Blake Lively. Because, hello, Blake Lively.

And then there are these girls:

Karlie Kloss

We don't have supermodels anymore like we had in the 80's with the trinity of Christy, Naomi and Linda. Instead, we have Victoria's Secret Angels, Instagram models and reality stars (and their kids).

And we have Karlie Kloss. Sure, there are other supermodels nowadays, but right now none is as compelling as 6'1" Karlie, who shot to fame at just 15 years old not because of her name, her boyfriend or her YouTube videos, but because she had "it." Now at 24, she is leveraging her success as a model, social media star and bestie of Taylor Swift into social activism for young women.

Through Kode with Karlie, Ms. Kloss underwrote 21 computer coding scholarships for girls in 2015. She has collaborated with Momofuku Milk Bar on Karlie's Kookies, a line of vegan cookies sold to benefit hungry children and other charities. And lest you think her a slacker, she's a women's studies major at NYU.

If you think the proud self-proclaimed feminist couldn't be more awesome, she eats pepperoni pizza on the regular. With ranch dressing. And she takes home the leftovers.

Lena Dunham

I love Lena Dunham. I thoroughly do not enjoy her Instagram, but I follow her anyway because I love, I love, I love Lena Dunham.

The almost frighteningly self-aware director, producer, writer actress and activist made her mark on Television and on history by creating one of the most intelligent and insightful analyses of our time ever produced, the show that made me cry 100 times, Girls, i.e., the truest thing I've ever seen.

To put in perspective the magnitude of what Lena Dunham accomplished with her HBO sitcom, imagine that Michael Jackson had written a merciless satiric novel about a freakish, plastic-surgery-obsessed, formerly black pop singer, or that Bill Clinton had come up with a hilariously caustic screenplay about a truth-challenged southern horndog of a president. Her superhuman level of self-acceptance, of introspection, of truth, is an inspiration to every woman trying to survive in a world full of criticism and superficiality.

Girls is gone now, but Lena isn't going anywhere. In fact, she just keeps getting louder. A master of every medium, she has another book coming out this year and *fingers crossed* a new HBO show based on Lenny Letter.

Hillary Clinton

The once great-white-feminist-hope is through with long walks in the woods — on Tuesday, she told Christiane Amanpour (who is also killing it) at a Women for Women International event in New York that she’s back to being an “activist citizen” and “part of the resistance.”

For Clinton, that entails speaking out about the role misogyny played in the election. “It’s really troubling to me,” she said. “Whatever your political party, whatever your ideological bent, you have a stake, as a woman and a man, in ensuring that the promise of equality that we hold out and the efforts that so many women and men have made over the decades to secure it don’t go backwards.” Clinton added that she’ll also continue to call out the president in a public forum. “I am going to publicly request that this administration not end our efforts making women’s rights and opportunities central to American foreign policy and national security.”

Welcome to the resistance, Hillary.

Pamela Romanowsky

Readers, meet the director who's championing awkward girls everywhere.
If you can peel your eyes off the prowling cat slinking through Shatterbox Anthology's newest short feature, you'll probably notice that the film resonates as a poignant celebration of childhood — a world shaped by dreams, imagination, and, above all, vulnerability.

For director Pamela Romanowsky, this sense of unbounded wonder is always near at hand. Like Khethiwe, her new film's protagonist, Romanowsky struggled as a kid to preserve her quirky confidence while navigating middle school, though she knew that her curiosity made her unique. "I wanted to build a story with girls at the center of it — I was remembering what it was like when I was 13, an often-muddy outdoor child and a daydreamer who loved to write," she recalled to Refinery29. "Before I joined a mainstream school, my imagination gave me my sense of self. After I switched out of the Montessori program, it made me realize how weird I was. My intelligence and creativity made me a target for bullying, and I stopped talking about it."

Romanowsky's memories are sadly familiar. Women are too often cast out for their smarts and energy, easy prey for loud mansplainers across classrooms and debate stages. Khethiwe and the Leopard, threaded with fragments of an unsure girl's stories, spotlights the sensitive child's quiet power — especially her potential to teach others empathy. "As kids, we're really good at nurturing creativity, but as we move through life, we become insecure about it, since it makes us feel overexposed," Romanowsky says. "I wish more adults would let themselves find outlets for the imagination. I’m lucky in that my work inherently involves creativity all the time, but sometimes I feel really vulnerable — and I’m most vulnerable when I just let my imagination fly."

Sally Yates

She had to know there would be repercussions once she sent a memo saying the Department of Justice wouldn't defend Orange Hitler's so-called refugee ban. Her days as an acting attorney general were numbered anyway, but that didn't stop the Trump administration from removing her from office in a matter of hours. After serving the Justice Department for more than two decades, Yates' 27-years-long career there ended with her being fired.

But while Orange Hitler tweeted away a bunch of nonsense about how she supposedly "betrayed" the DOJ, the rest of us opted for words like "hero" and patriot."

Now, Sally continues to stick it to the (poor excuse for a) man with the announcement that she will contradict also-fired Michael Flynn's statements (read: lies) about his communications with Russia.

While Sally no longer holds office, her words still ring loudly as a mantra for human rights. "We are not the Department of Prosecutions or even the Department of Public Safety. We are the Department of Justice."

Cleo Wade

Poet, feminist and cool-girl Cleo speaks the truth about literally everything that matters. Scroll through your most-used social apps, and I bet you encounter an inspirational quote within minutes. Today, we're bombarded with pseudo-spiritual cliches and motivational platitudes in caption, status-update, and shareable-graphic form. But rising above all the Likes-bait is Cleo Wade, a rare authentic voice in our daily feeds. The NY-based poet's typewritten, painted, and hand-scrawled notes-- poems, affirmations and reality checks preaching self-love, woman power and wokeness-- have garnered her nearly 200k followers seeking real-deal inspo.

With the app as her primary platform, Wade represents a new kind of artist-- one who can instantly publish her work to the masses, rather than share it with the typical gallery-going crowd alone.

Wade wrote in a recent essay, "Every moment of being a woman is a series of small victories. Systematically the deck is stacked against us. If it wasn't, we would have equal pay to men and enjoy the benefits of gender equality across the board. I write for all people, but you have to check the temperature around you and feel where there's a need. As women, we've been raised by society to compete with rather than honor and root for each other, and all of that can be flipped."