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   Hosted by actress Garcelle Beauvais-Nilon of NYPD Blue fame, the show got off to a rousing start with opening remarks from Fern Mallis, Executive Director of Seventh on Sixth and Ms Galler. Then it was on with the show.
   The 10 finalists are incredibly courageous people and inspirational human beings. Twenty-seven-year-old Miatta Dabo of Baltimore, Md., is an attorney–accountant who plans to open a

The most enthusiastic applause went to Sharon Blynn. Inspired by her experience with ovarian cancer and chemotherapy-induced hair loss, she founded Bald is Beautiful, to address a woman’s inner beauty

foster home for underprivileged and orphaned children as well as finding ways to provide education and business loans to women in third world countries. She currently sponsors several children through Children International, Feed-A-Child and Plan International, in addition to being a member of Equality Now (an international women’s rights organization) and Amnesty International. Chelsea Ferguson is a professional basketball player on the European Tour who coaches 13-year-old girls in her local community in Somerset, NJ. Gloria Ford was nominated by her husband, who describes her as ‘one of the strongest, most confident, and most giving women you could ever hope to meet. Everything she puts her mind to is performed with seemingly 100 per cent perfection: raising our five-year-old, running a securities trading office, leading two community theatre groups, fundraising for a new school [or] spearheading development of our local downtown. [I am] the luckiest husband on earth.’
   But by far, the most enthusiastic applause went to Sharon Blynn of New York City. Inspired by her experience with ovarian cancer and chemotherapy-induced hair loss, she founded Bald is Beautiful, an organization that seeks to address a woman’s inner beauty and to reach out to and reassure women that the ‘diminished self-esteem and insecurity about femininity these women experience [while going through treatment of various cancers] is counter-productive to healing.’ In her viewpoint, ‘the fashion industry can help women tap into their inner resources and survive with renewed, reinvigorated sense of self. Women need to hear that they are beautiful, powerful and not just the sum of their parts. They are spiritually whole [and] perfect.’
   In the final analysis, it wasn’t the clothes that made these women so very special to me, although I am willing to grant them one thing: this was the only show where the models seemed to be having any sort of fun on the runway. Instead, I was inspired by their stories, their bright, optimistic viewpoint on life and the miracle of believing that anything is possible. We increasingly live in a world where the negative and horrible consistently overshadow the good that is happening around us. It was good to know that there are some good things worth celebrating, and that, more often than not, they are right underneath our very noses. •

Phillip D. Johnson is features’ editor of Lucire.

For more information on the show, log online at www.everywomenfashion.com. For information on the Ortho Evra birth control patch, visit www.orthoevra.com. The Esteemed Woman Foundation is a non-profit organization created to empower women of all ages and backgrounds to build and maintain a healthy sense of self-worth through development and implementation of educational programmes, resource materials, and production of media programmes and events. For more information, visit www.esteemedwoman.com or call 1 877 6-ESTEEM. Self is the preeminent healthy lifestyle magazine for women. It provides comprehensive and compelling journalism on women’s health and well-being issues. For more information on Self, visit www.self.com.