NEW YORK: Actress Reese Witherspoon accepted a Glamour woman of the year award.

The annual ceremony at Carnegie Hall in Manhattan mixes high-wattage celebrities with lesser known names, and this year, the award winners include five women touched by the South Carolina church massacre — Alana Simmons, Nadine Collier, Bethane Middleton-Brown, Felicia Sanders and Polly Sheppard — and lauded in the aftermath as “The Peacemakers of Charleston.”

Also among those honored: Dancer Misty Copeland, designer Victoria Beckham, TV personality Caitlyn Jenner, entrepreneur Elizabeth Holmes, Planned Parenthoood’s Cecile Richards and the victorious US women’s soccer team. Copeland, who became the first female African-American principal at American Ballet Theatre in June, took the opportunity to serve as a role model in accepting her award.

“Thank you for honoring a black ballerina.” To the young girls seated in the balcony from various schools and girls clubs, she said, “We’re trying to set the best example for you.”

Witherspoon gave the final speech of the night, speaking passionately about female ambition. “I believe ambition is not a dirty word,” she said.


Witherspoon co-founded a production company, Pacific Standard, which aims to make films featuring strong female lead roles as way to fight the gender gap in Hollywood. The company’s “Wild” and “Gone Girl” earned Oscar nominations for Witherspoon, Laura Dern and Rosamund Pike.





Witherspoon described her quest to give more actresses leading roles in films — “not the wife or the girlfriend, but the lead,” she said.

Among the achievements of some of this year’s other honorees:

Beckham gained fame as a Spice Girl, but has since become a highly respected fashion designer.

The US women’s soccer team handily defeated Japan to win the 2015 World Cup in July, and was recently welcomed at the White House by President Barack Obama.