WEEKEND COLUMNISTS Who is that? At a large dinner in New York City I felt somewhat disadvantaged since I couldn’t identify most of the people in the room . And if I could, it wasn’t because I had met them. I did, for instance, recognise Nicole Kidman, who was sitting next to Her Majesty Queen Rania of Jordan. But they were only two and there were more than 300 women gathered as guests of Indra Nooyi, Wendi Murdoch and Queen Rania at the fourth Important Dinner for Women in support of Millennium Development Goal Five, the reduction of maternal mortality.
Most of us were mothers, and we were there to pledge our resources (time, money, talent) to ensuring that fewer women die in childbirth in the developing world. While all three of our hosts spoke, it was Sarah Brown, wife of the prime minister, who issued the call to arms. One woman after another stood up and pledged to help, including quite a few Brits (Naomi Campbell and Geri Halliwell, for example, and yes, I did know who they were). I was sitting between two women whose husbands worked in the music industry, and they were brilliant at helping me out when, yet again, I didn’t recognise someone.
I had to be told by the lady on my left who Gayle King was, after she stopped by our table to say hello, and then when Diana Taylor stood up to chair the open-mike session, the lady on my right had to explain that she dated Michael Bloomberg, the mayor of New York. I never realised dinner companions could be so useful. If it were up to me, I would take those two with me to all major social events that I attend.
Sadly for me, they are not available for general briefing duties; one is married to Bono and the other to David Bowie. Iman told me that she has two children, a nine-year-old with Bowie and a 30-year-old from a previous relationship. A 30-year-old? I knew I should have taken my hearing aid. I asked her to repeat it twice, I was so incredulous. “I’m 54,” this vision of perfection announced, producing her reading glasses from her handbag to prove it.
Presumably as part of an orchestrated campaign to make me feel inadequate, I was on the “former supermodels” table, with Helena Christensen and Christy Turlington. The latter I had seen praised earlier in the day during a session on maternal health at the United Nations by no less a person than the prime minister of Tanzania, not someone I was aware was familiar with former supermodels. But Turlington, who is a mother of two young children and studying for a masters in public health at Columbia, showed a short and powerful film at the UN session, some of which had been shot (with considerable difficulty) in Tanzania. That’s the kind of achievement that makes me feel much more inadequate than simply being about three times her body mass.
Current supermodels were on other tables; Natalia Vodianova is so tall that I needed her to sit down before I could appreciate quite how beautiful this Russian model turned wife, mother and philanthropist is. But the role model that I was longing to meet, and never quite managed to, was Pulitzer-prize-winning author Sheryl WuDunn, whose book Half the Sky I had read on the plane on the way over. I recommend it despite its sobering subtitle, Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide; it is both inspiring and educative.
I can say the same of my dinner companions. I am not easily intimidated, but place me between Ali Hewson and Iman for two hours or so and I get nervous. Both are older than me and look years younger (Hewson has extraordinary natural beauty, and on a table of supermodels held her own) and both were very welcoming to an overweight middle-aged mother-of-three who hadn’t a clue who anyone was.
