What is a lady?

According to definition, a Lady is a woman with refined taste. She is polite, dignified, with a great upbringing, good manners and tastefully adorned.

Looking at the world today, not many fit into this "definition" of a Lady, yet many of us still want to be a Lady and many of us ARE.

We want to be acknowledged, respected and loved for who we are.

We choose role models to emulate like First Lady Jaqueline Bouvier Kennedy Onassis, and Princess Diana Spencer, and First Lady to the State of California, Marie Shriver.

Not only are they role models but people we actually feel close to. They are a part of our families because we have grown with them and took part in their lives (thanks to the media) in all their laughter and sorrows.

When death parts us, we are at a loss. We enshrine them as we would any beloved person in our own family.

Unlike yesterday’s Lady, today’s Lady comes in all styles and packages.

We include First Lady Carla Bruni Sarkozy of France, Argentinian First Lady Christina Fernandez de Kirchner, Imelda Marcos of the Philipines,Svetlana Medvedeva of Russia, German Eva Louise Koehler, Britain’s Sarah Brown,US Laura Bush now replaced by Michelle Obama.

Who are all these women? What do they mean to us and our society and how do they affect our lives?

In retrospect we also have other role models like Oprah and Martha Stewart. They have somewhat of a tarnished past but have become very strong women, overcoming all odds in a world full of critics.

All these women give us a sense of self worth. They empower us by giving us reason to believe that in this life, anything is possible.

They live the American Dream and the dream is still out there for all of us to live.

We are all “A LADY” and we can live and laugh and cry…at a Lady’s Life.

Our adventure begins with Laura Bush, a librarian. She made people laugh by admitting to people she was a Desperate Housewife. She eased tensions by poking fun at her husband, making him look human and vulnerable to the world while playing the role of a War President.

Tina Fey reported that when asked how she would help juvenile delinquents with substance abuse problems, she answered: “Oh like I always do. I marry them and have their children.”

Laura Bush tickled many with her unexpected one liners, criticizing her Mother in law, admitting to going to men strip clubs, admitting to killing a person with her car as a teen, alluding to her husband as once giving a horse, a hand job. (Things we all do).

Her wit and personality had the ability to soften many hard core people who saw her as a human being and not just as a wife of the most powerful man in the world and the comedian in chief.

She ventured out of her White House, to help her country in its time of woe in any way she could even if it took sitting at conferences with President Clinton knowing all the fun that would be made out of socializing with him.

She was a woman of her own making – A LADY. Every one who watched her, learned from her.

Elizabeth Browning wrote a poem I’d like to include in

A Lady’s Life.
A Woman's Shortcomings
She has laughed as softly as if she sighed,
She has counted six, and over,
Of a purse well filled, and a heart well tried -
Oh, each a worthy lover!
They "give her time"; for her soul must slip
Where the world has set the grooving;
She will lie to none with her fair red lip:
But love seeks truer loving.

She trembles her fan in a sweetness dumb,
As her thoughts were beyond recalling;
With a glance for one, and a glance for some,
From her eyelids rising and falling;
Speaks common words with a blushful air,
Hears bold words, unreproving;
But her silence says - what she never will swear -
And love seeks better loving.

Go, lady! lean to the night-guitar,
And drop a smile to the bringer;
Then smile as sweetly, when he is far,
At the voice of an in-door singer.
Bask tenderly beneath tender eyes;
Glance lightly, on their removing;
And join new vows to old perjuries -
But dare not call it loving!

Unless you can think, when the song is done,
No other is soft in the rhythm;
Unless you can feel, when left by One,
That all men else go with him;
Unless you can know, when unpraised by his breath,
That your beauty itself wants proving;
Unless you can swear "For life, for death!" -
Oh, fear to call it loving!

Unless you can muse in a crowd all day
On the absent face that fixed you;
Unless you can love, as the angels may,
With the breadth of heaven betwixt you;
Unless you can dream that his faith is fast,
Through behoving and unbehoving;
Unless you can die when the dream is past -
Oh, never call it loving!

Elizabeth Barrett Browning