Rima the Magnificent is the # 1 model in the world.
She's also the only winner of "Miss U.S.A." (2010) to make something of herself internationally.
Marilyn Monroe was a wasp; Arabs got Rima. And yeah, the Lebanese Arabs conquered Michigan. Happened a couple years ago. We didn't tell you..... sorry. And the GOPers went off into their usual screaming, hair-pulling dystopia when Rima came along.
Then there's Elle Oriental, the magazine, which has operated out of Beirut, Lebanon since 2006. Rima was born in Sarifa. Mix of Shi'ia and Sunni relatives, as though urban Lebanese care about that sort of thing.
Désirée Sadek decided to make Rima a big star -- like this:
From there things moved rapidly: Rima became the face of America in the Middle East.
Pics of her on boats and driving cars and going exotic places went on the walls of little Arab girls everywhere. For modernizers, for business communities all over MENA she became the Modern Woman.
She's also the face of Lebanon for their export goods in Egypt, Saudi, Bahrain and points east as far as India and China. A shocker: full size 5'8" poster of the girl on the train platform in Singapore.
Yeah, again, like no one else in the modelling world, people everywhere know who she is and know her story. (Hint: she sold her car to pay the fees and expenses to participate in the Michigan "Miss USA" contest.)
She became the highest paid model in the world in 2012, breaking $30 million. Then after rebranding to work in the spokesperson role, her fees went up to a total of $58 million for 2014.
The key to this success is how she comes across in interviews. On the one hand she combines gentleness with crisp phrasings blending Arabic with English. And on the other Rima is quite clear that she intends to see the world and to participate/interact with people everywhere. For her generation of Arab girls, she embodies freedom.
Rima is smart. About as sharp as it gets. Top 1% coming out of high school. She has her B.A. with Honors in Business Administration. Her LSATs got her into law school, though with the kind of money that's rolling in for modeling and doing presentation work that's on hold.
And hiding her terrorist AK-47 in her bikinis is one of the coolest tradecraft tricks I've heard of. Plus that her big black piece has a 40-shot banana clip, if we're going to believe Malkin, Limbaugh, Pat Robertson, and Bachman. And her relatives are Hezbollah assassins, don'tcha know....
"TERRORIST IN A BIKINI !!"
I can't think of any person or any event, ever, where the RWNJ/GOP Dystopia proved a worse fit to reality.
In truth, Rima reaches/moves/inspires a big part her generation of Arab young women. She's beautiful which is the least of it. Go girl !!