Megan Thee Stallion helped many of us get through the pandemic. It’s not just her songs, like “Savage” and “WAP,” that have provided much-needed escapism during difficult days. It’s her triumphant hottie energy, her choice to bring every single willing person with her on the journey to feeling good. 

It’s this and so much more that makes her our 2021 Glamour Woman of the Year. “The bigger my platform gets, I start realizing that I’m not the only woman that goes through what I go through,” she told us. “I want to bring things to light so other women don’t feel like they have to continue to be silent.”

At the Glamour WOTY ceremony in New York on Monday, November 8, Megan was honored by hip hop’s Salt-N-Pepa. “Take her in,” Pepa said. “She is Thee Stallion. Beautiful, bold, assertive, fearless. I love everything that she’s doing.” When Salt-N-Pepa started, she said, “Everything was a struggle. There were so few women in the game back in the day. We helped open doors, yes we did. But Megan, she came and kicked the door down, pulled up a seat at the table, ordered a big dinner and poured Hottie Sauce all over the damn thing. She is doing it well, henny. Pushing it real good.” 

“Just 26 years old, Megan is young, talented and powerful, the pride of Houston,” Pepa said. “She’s a Grammy-award winning rapper, a Popeye’s franchise owner—I love that!—and as of this fall, a college graduate with a bachelor’s of science in health administration from Texas Southern.” Pepa went on, “Even while she was dealing with recent loss and trauma, she continues to spread a message of positivity and empowerment for women: young women like my daughter Egypt. Young girls, thicc girls, always taking the time to look and listen, to educate and give back in so many different ways.”

“Megan represents what I stand for,” she added. “So many people out there trying to shut us down, but she reminds us to love every inch of who we are, to stay true to ourselves, to know our worth and to go for it.”

Megan took the stage, to huge applause. “I’ve been in tears all night because everyone is so inspiring,” she said. True to her reputation, she began her speech by systematically thanking just about every woman who helped her get to where she is, from her stylist Zerina Akers to the journalist who wrote her profile in Glamour, Zandria Robinson. 

Then, in a deeply emotional moment, she spoke about her mom, Holly Thomas, who passed away in 2019.

“I also want to thank my mom, that’s my woman. [crying] I was doing so good! I want to thank my mom because she taught me how to be the woman that i am today, she’s my best friend, my manager, she was my everything and I know she’s so proud of me today. My Big Mama—my great grandmother—she was like, ‘Megan I don’t give a damn how many songs you write as long as you get that degree. So I was like, ’You know what? I don’t give a damn how many songs I write! I’m gonna stay in school because I know my Mama and my Big Mama watching me and that’s what they’d want me to do. 

Ufot added, “I’m supposed to be here. LaTosha Brown, Helen Butler, we’re supposed to be here.” She also astutely pointed out that we still live in a country where the “male, pale, stale minority fight with each other about which of our rights to take away.”  

Dr. Katalin Karikó’s daughter, Susan Francia, gave a sweet tribute to her mom. 

“I’m so honored to speak tonight on behalf of 2021 Glamour Woman of the Year Dr. Katalin Karikó, who I usually call Mom,” she said. “She has to be in Germany for work tonight, but you’ll have to excuse her for sending me instead, because the work she does saves lives. It was her lifelong efforts in RNA research that enabled Pfizer and Moderna to create the mRNA vaccine that is preventing the spread of COVID-19.” 

The first-ever Daring to Disrupt Award, presented by Ally, went to Peloton’s Robin Arzón. 

Pam Drucker Mann, Condé Nast’s global chief revenue officer and president of U.S. revenue, thanked all of the evening’s sponsors and welcomed soccer star Alex Morgan to the stage to present the Daring to Disrupt Award, presented by Ally, a Woman of the Year presenting sponsor.

“Robin has always been a strong leader, building Peloton and her personal brand to new heights,” Morgan said in her introduction of Arzón. “As an author, coach, mom, marathon runner, and top instructor, she inspires her fans to live happy and authentic lives. But by daring to share her joy and her challenges as a pregnant athlete and a powerful executive, she breaks new ground in women’s representation. Robin, and lots of us in sport, want the world to understand that true success is more than a medal or a corner office; it’s living a daring, big, and, bold life.” 

“I am absolutely astonished to be here in this room,” Arzón said. “I was raised by disruptors…. When we make waves, we’re going to make people uncomfortable. Disruptors and innovators are almost always misunderstood, questioned, and threatening. And I say, let’s make waves, and they’re just gonna have to learn how to swim.” 

The women behind Heart of Dinner’s moving remarks 

“The first time that I saw a video of an elderly man being attacked…the unmistakable agony on his face felt too painful to watch, it was unbearable. I saw the face of my father, my Ah Ma—that’s my grandma—and all of our grandparents. But instead of turning away from the pain, we stepped into it, knowing that we had each other’s love as our safety net,” Moonlynn Tsai and Yin Chang said in their acceptance speech. “In that love we birthed Heart of Dinner. It gave us hope to weather the most difficult terrain throughout the pandemic and enabled us to sustain. Our relationship expanded as we formed friendships with thousands who found their own safety net in our community.” 

Christopher Meloni tributing Woman of the year (and his Law & Order costar) Mariska Hargitay 

“Radiant. Charming. Funny. Embracing. Generous. Elegant. Honest. Appreciative. Inclusive. Direct. Vivacious. That’s my favorite one: vivacious,” he said. These two! 

And Hargitay’s speech

“The dictionary says that glamour is ‘an exciting and often illusory and romantic attractiveness,’ or in another dictionary, ‘an attractive or exciting quality that makes certain people or things seem appealing,’” she said, “What’s the obvious implication? That glamour covers, that glamour is surface, and that the real is underneath. So I’d just like to say: No, I decide. Glamour isn’t surface…. Our glamour is something that lives and shines and breathes deep, deep in us…. You don’t tell us what our glamour means: We decide.” She also said some heartfelt words about her mother, Jayne Mansfield.

Pepa from Salt-N-Pepa introducing Megan Thee Stallion

“Look at Megan,” Pepa said. “Take her in. She is Thee Stallion. Beautiful, bold…fearless. I love everything that she’s doing. For me, coming up as Salt-N-Pepa, everything was a struggle. There were so few women in the game back in the day. We helped open doors, yes we did. But Megan kicked the door down, pulled up a seat at the table, ordered a big dinner, and poured Hottie Sauce all over the damn thing.” 

Megan’s speech, naturally, was incredible too. 

The rapper got emotional talking about her mother, saying, “She taught me how to be the woman I am today.

Moonlynn Tsai and Yin Chang just wanted to keep Asian elders safe. Near the beginning of the pandemic, during a surge of violent, racist attacks, they launched Heart of Dinner, an organization that brings hot, beautifully prepared meals to older members of the Asian community in New York City’s Chinatown. Their project, the couple says, was “born out of despair.” But by treating their neighbors with deep empathy and care, they nourished a sense of hope. 

At the Glamour Women of the Year Awards held on November 8, fashion designer Prabal Gurung passionately welcomed the Heart of Dinner founders. Citing the over 10,000 hate incidents against Asians in the U.S. reported by Stop AAPI Hate since the pandemic began, he said, “These wounds to our community are not new; they’ve always been there.” Asian-Americans, he noted, “are the fastest growing racial or ethnic group in the U.S. electorate, but somehow we’ve always been rendered insignificant or invisible.” He added, “That’s why I feel we can never be too bold or too loud in our fight for safety, inclusivity and acceptance.” For Tsai and Chang, he said, “their activism is powered by love.” 

Tsai and Chang accepted their award with an emotional speech. “The first time that I saw a video of an elderly man being attacked, the unmistakable agony on his face felt too painful to watch, it was unbearable,” said Chang. “I saw the face of my father, my Ah Ma—that’s my grandma—and all of our grandparents. But instead of turning away from the pain, we stepped into it, knowing that we had each other’s love as our safety net.”

Tsai went on, “In that love we birthed Heart of Dinner. It gave us hope to weather the most difficult terrain throughout the pandemic and enabled us to sustain. Our relationship expanded as we formed friendships with thousands who found their own safety net in our community.” Their work, she said, isn’t only about delivering food: “Our elderly recipients get to see how much love and inclusivity there is in this community, which helps the isolating and terrifying news about targeted attacks towards them.” 

“Together,” Chang elaborated, “we are able to shine light on the good in the world, as we see that people are innately drawn towards acts of love. These loving acts can change a life—and yours too. So don’t be afraid to challenge the pain, as that is where we often find a flicker of hope. When we are able to confront despair with unwavering conviction and integrity, we replace it with the beautiful and the good.” 

Tsai and Chang ended their Women of the Year speech by thanking their mothers for teaching them empathy. It feels safe to say that empathy is a lesson that both women truly internalized. They call Heart of Dinner’s product “empathy, wrapped up in a thoughtful care package.”

The Glamour Woman of the Year Awards ceremony was held in compliance with local health and safety guidelines. 

Following the 2020 election, Stacey Abrams was compared to George Washington. To Moses. To God. Abrams is widely credited for organizing Georgia voters and getting out the vote, in spite of immense voter suppression that targets people of color. Thanks to her, pundits agreed, a state that hadn’t gone for the Democratic Party since 1992 helped hand Joe Biden the presidency and elevated two Democrats to the senate. The voice of the people of Georgia was heard at full volume, across the nation.

But Abrams made this clear: She did not do it alone. She was not a solitary hero. She did it, primarily, with Black women leaders. And their names are not to be erased.

At the Glamour Women of the Year Awards held on November 8, Stacey Abrams honored some of the Georgia women responsible for activating true democracy in the 2020 election: LaTosha Brown, cofounder of Black Voters Matter Fund; Helen Butler, the executive director of the Georgia Coalition for the People’s Agenda; and Nsé Ufot, CEO of The New Georgia Project. These women, Abrams told the Women of the Year audience via video message, “helped build the infrastructure in Georgia that made the dream of flipping the state a reality.” Abrams credited Brown, Butler, Ufot, and their respective organizations with helping lead voters not from apathy, but from despair. “The work these women have led is critical because it showed Georgians that their votes are directly connected to the progress we want to see,” she said.

Brown kicked off the speeches, singing “This Little Light of Mine.” “We believe in something great and something better, but who can make it happen? Black people, and Black women; we get stuff done,” she said. 

“I would like to thank Glamour magazine for honoring, recognizing, and recording the work of women of color, especially Black women, who have for decades been working to fulfill the American dream of democracy for all as highlighted by the Statue of Liberty: ‘Give me your tired, your poor, and those yearning to be free,’” Butler said. 

Ufot added, “I’m supposed to be here. LaTosha Brown, Helen Butler, we’re supposed to be here.” She also astutely pointed out that we still live in a country where the “male, pale, stale minority fight with each other about which of our rights to take away.”  

Jenny Singer is a staff writer for Glamour. You can follow her on Twitter. 

The Glamour Woman of the Year Awards ceremony was held in compliance with local health and safety guidelines.

Amanda Gorman has had an incredible year. The 23-year-old first-ever National Youth Poet Laureate read poems at both President Joe Biden’s inauguration and the Super Bowl, stunned at the Met gala, and, now is one of Glamour’s 2021 Women of the Year. “Don’t dream to be the next Amanda Gorman. Dream to be the first you,” Gorman said in her WOTY interview. “We need new, diverse, different voices, and the world isn’t served if people imitate me. The more that we have people who are excellent at doing what they do, I think the brighter and bolder we’ll all be for it.” 

At the Women of the Year Awards, held on Monday, November 8, Gorman was honored with her award by ballerina Misty Copeland. “When I was just 16, I saw a Black ballerina on the cover of a magazine, and it changed the course of my life. Because I could see it, I believed that I could be it,” Copeland said in her introduction. “On January 20th of this year, when Kamala Harris took the oath of office, I pictured all kinds of women watching her and believing that we could shift from inequality to justice. And when I heard Amanda Gorman recite her poem ‘The Hill We Climb,’ I imagined all of the aspiring girls of color who saw themselves in her, and visualized their own potential.”

Copeland continued, “Amanda ushered in a new era of American letters that day. Through her epic Super Bowl performance, best-selling books, and influential social media presence, she shines optimism, patriotism, and light, and reminds us all that our voices and our words have the power to change the world.” 

Amanda Gorman couldn’t attend the 2021 Glamour Women of the Year Awards in person, but she wrote an incredible speech for the occasion. Read it in full, below:

“Thank you, everyone! I so wish I could be with you in person tonight–not only with the phenomenal honorees but the remarkable guests in the room. I want to give a huge thank you to Glamour for this award, and also for supporting me throughout the years. In 2018 I was named a Glamour College Woman of the Year, and I still remember being so excited to attend the Women of the Year Awards as an audience member. Little did I know that three years later, I’d come back as an honoree, and in the midst of a global pandemic. 

“The issues that we see planet-wide just upped the stakes of fighting for gender equity and justice around the world. So tonight, I’m sharing my poem ‘Miracle of Morning’ because while I’m being honored, I in turn want to honor the incredible and necessary work that is being done on the front lines of the pandemic, especially by women. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, 76% of full-time health-care jobs are held by females. Our lives are literally in their hands. That is to say—if the future is female, then the world’s wellness dwells in women. 

“The problems that we see around the globe are also interconnected, which also means that by uplifting women, we raise up us all. And so I hope that you can join in our cresting wave, using whatever instrument you have at hand, whether that be your intelligence, your ferocity, your voice, your heart. 

“I wrote these words three years ago as a College Woman of the Year, and they still ring true:

Time and time again we’re shining, finding 

That the glow of one woman is beautiful

But together our glamour is blinding.

“Thank you.” 

The Glamour Woman of the Year Awards ceremony was held in compliance with local health and safety guidelines.

The vaccine pioneer protecting the world. The most powerful force in hip-hop. The TV detective campaigning for survivors in real life. The superheroes of democracy. The activists countering Asian American hate one meal at a time. And the poet who became the voice of a generation. Meet the class of 2021.

In 2013—after enduring multiple professional setbacks, one denied grant after another, and a demotion at the institution to which she’d been devoted for decades—Katalin Karikó, Ph.D., walked out of her lab at the University of Pennsylvania’s School of Medicine for the last time.

For decades the Hungarian biochemist had been fixated on the possibilities of mRNA, the genetic messenger that delivers DNA instructions to the protein-making infrastructure in each of our cells. Karikó—with her collaborator, immunologist Drew Weissman, M.D., Ph.D.—believed in its potential to treat stubborn and fatal conditions like strokes and even cancer, hoping that mRNA could be used to program cells to produce their own cures. The two were evangelizers, but their work attracted few converts. Those who knew about it tended to be dismissive: fanciful, nice concept, dead end.

That morning at the lab, Karikó’s old boss had come to see her off. She did not tell him what a terrible mistake he was making in letting her leave. She didn’t gloat about her future at BioNTech, a pharmaceuticals firm that millions now associate with lifesaving vaccines but was then a relative upstart in the field. Instead the woman who had bounced from department to department, with no tenure prospects and never earning over $60,000 a year, said with total confidence: “In the future, this lab will be a museum. Don’t touch it.”

Back in 2013 pandemics were the subjects of big-budget blockbusters like Contagion and books about the great influenza of 1918. Few people expected to experience one, and even fewer knew the name of the scientist whose marginalized research would go on to serve as the foundation for some of the most effective vaccines ever made.

Karikó has never craved fame, nor did she spend decades toiling at the bench for prizes (although she and Weissman have received the Lasker Award, the Horwitz Prize, the Dr. Paul Janssen Award for Biomedical Research, and the Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences in just the past few months). But fine, she has started to take a little pleasure in certain aspects of worldwide renown. First there’s the dream turned real—for her, scientific progress is measured in actual impact. With millions inoculated and the path out of the pandemic charted on the foundation of her research, she has lived to see the purpose in her work. And second, there’s the small, modest delight she takes in the fact that a few weeks before our interview, she ran into the man who’d led her out of her beloved lab at Penn eight years earlier. He told her he was preparing to give a lecture about her.

The best advice I’ve received in my life has been from my mother who quotes Polonius in Hamlet, saying, “To thine own self be true.” She must have told me that every few days growing up, literally while I was taking my lunchbox out of the car. The best advice I received this year would be from Oprah Winfrey, who told me that “no” is a complete sentence.

What advice do you have for all the little Amanda Gormans out there who are looking up to you and the path you’re blazing. What do you want them to feel, and what do you want them to know?

I would say don’t dream to be the next Amanda Gorman. Dream to be the first you. We need new, diverse, different voices, and the world isn’t served if people imitate me. The more that we have people who are excellent at doing what they do, I think the brighter and bolder we’ll all be for it.

What would you say to seven-year-old Amanda, if you could meet her now?

Seven is such a specific age!

I know. I feel like seven is the age when you start to develop your sense of self.

Yes, and puberty is just on the horizon so it’s make-or-break time. What would I tell her? I would tell her what’s on my sweater right now: “My Voice Is Vital.” I just used to be so ashamed and feel so guilty about having a speech impediment and speaking the way that I did. I felt like it was this ugly, degenerate part of me. It took me so many years to learn that it’s actually one of the most beautiful things that makes me who I am. I would have tugged seven-year-old Amanda to the side and said, “Listen, your voice is going to change the world. There is nothing to be ashamed about.”

What would she be most proud of—seven-year-old Amanda?

In a spiritual sense, I think seven-year-old Amanda would just be proud that 22-year-old Amanda is still herself and who she is. I think that’s been one of the most core principles of my life. No matter how the world changes, I want to stay the same. I want to evolve, and grow, and develop, but still keep the DNA of who I am.

In terms of what I’ve accomplished, when I was little, I really wanted to be published. That was it for me. The fact that I was published and then saw my own name on the New York Times Best Sellers List—I feel like my seven-year-old self would have thrown up on the mat with shock.

Photographed by Shaniqwa Jarvis; styled by Jason Bolden; hair by LaRae Burress; makeup by Joanna Simkin. Photographed at Jumel Terrace Books in Harlem, specializing in African and African-American art, literature, music, and history.

Kerry: “Addicted”—love it. There are worse things to be addicted to than democracy building. Miss LaTosha Brown, how about you? Your aha moment.

LaTosha Brown: It’s interesting. I am sitting here thinking about the question, and I don’t know if I have an answer of an aha moment in the sense that I think there have been several moments. I was led to the work because I love human beings. There’s been two things that have shaped who I am—this deep love for life and people, and then this keen sense of injustice. I never liked to see people use power against people who were powerless,

I keep telling people that my work is not about elections. It’s about, How are we going to restore or reclaim our humanity? And for me, voting is an expression of that. Every single human being should have a right to have some input on decisions made about their lives, and so I fundamentally believe that to the core of my being. I want the world to be better.

Kerry: You’re not going to have me crying today.

Nsé: I love it.

Kerry: Nsé, what about you?

Nsé: Like LaTosha, I feel like I was always a precocious kid that felt things very deeply and had a strong sense of “This is not right.” I didn’t know if I could do anything about it, but you going to hear me say something because I don’t like what I’m seeing!

Listen, I’m an immigrant kid from a working-class family; [the daughter of] a single parent from Nigeria. They don’t play any kind of games. My junior year of college, I got my first D in organic chemistry, and I was pre-med. I was like, “All right, so I’m about to be murdered.” I didn’t feel like I had a lot of career options, but the truth was I did. It was the summer of 2001. I had pledged a sorority. I had got a little boyfriend. And I had hustled an internship at CNN for the summer. [The network was] covering the World Conference Against Racism, and so I spent the summer in Durban, South Africa. I met so many lawyers who did not practice law. There were communicators, there were fundraisers, there were graphic designers. It felt like, “Oh, this might be something that I could do where I could satisfy my family, but also get paid or figure out a way to feed myself to do the work that I care about deeply; the democracy work that I care about, the justice work that I care about.”

These volunteers are motivated by history and culture, by a need to serve those too long ignored by our society. This is personal work. For Nancy Pappas, the first designer of Heart of Dinner’s logo and website, her identity as a Korean American adoptee without a strong link to her history is what motivated her to join. Through Heart of Dinner, she’s found a deep connection, and she looks up to Moonlynn and Yin as role models. “It’s a very homey community; it’s a family-based space,” Nancy says.

Andrew Teoh, who has designed tote bags for Heart of Dinner, agrees: “When I first heard about the initiative, I immediately thought about my parents. I thought about the elderly who are too scared to go out because of COVID and xenophobic attacks.” Now, he says, “Heart of Dinner means community to me. And, also, family.”

What makes Heart of Dinner so special—so urgent and necessary and sustaining—is this shared understanding of family as something greater than blood ties and households and much more than a simple relationship of obligation. More than feeding the vulnerable, Moonlynn and Yin’s organization is about respect. Yin shares an anecdote of one family that bonded over decorating Heart of Dinner bags early last year, when three generations were confined inside an apartment together. Months later, when the matriarch was brutally attacked, her daughter was surprised to hear her bring up Heart of Dinner. “I’m now one of those victims they care for,” she said. “Thank God for them.” Moonlynn recounts reading about an older man who was attacked with a box cutter, and how desperately they searched for his identity so that they could offer assistance. As they were about to give up, the victim’s neighbors reached out to ask for Heart of Dinner’s help. “We had chills. His friends were like angels,” Yin says. The man, fully recovered, receives weekly packages now, addressed with his affectionate moniker of Big Brother in his native tongue. Yin shakes her head: “We were trying to find you.”

There’s an aura of kismet that hangs around all of Heart of Dinner’s work, and at its center is Moonlynn and Yin’s relationship. They are a rare couple—magnetic, sincere leaders who make things happen. While Moonlynn is taller and quieter, and Yin is chatty and quick to smile, they are both deeply empathetic and thoughtful. As two people in the creative sphere with unpredictable schedules, they have cultivated flexibility, and the boundaries between their work have blurred. Moonlynn helps Yin with her podcast, and Yin has buoyed Moonlynn through the ups and downs of restaurant life. Jacqueline Russo Eng, of Partybus Bakeshop, says, “It’s not often you meet people like those two. Everything that they do, they put 1,000% into, and they genuinely want to. They’re not doing anything out of obligation ever. It’s refreshing.”

Moonlynn believes their ability to adapt to new challenges and form community wherever they go stems from their genesis as a couple—they fell for each other at Burning Man. “It felt like my soul was set ablaze,” Yin says, grinning at Moonlynn. “I think something about falling for somebody in a place where there’s no boundaries, no labels, no nothing—that’s how our entire core and foundation of our relationship has been. That’s just how we do things, and maybe people pick up on it too.” With Heart of Dinner, after seven years of dating, they have finally been able to create something together as equal partners.