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" \n&amp;quot;Is sideboob the end game of feminism?&amp;quot; a real Web headline asked not long ago, sparking a &amp;quot;great debate.&amp;quot; But while we&amp;#039;re hoping the word &amp;quot;sideboob&amp;quot; (if not the practice itself) disappears in 2013, we&amp;#039;re not too worried about the cleavage trend making or breaking feminism today. Instead, recent lady-related buzz has raised a more burning question: Who do women look up to now? A recent New York magazine musing wondered at Oprah and Martha (Stewart) as domestic ideals, concluding that modern girls aspire to be a little bit like both titans\u2014baking cake pops like Martha would advise, but not dropping our basket if we burn them, like Oprah might.  Whether she likes it or not, Hillary Clinton is increasingly a role model, gaining traction to potentially become our first female president. Many look up to a real heroine, political prisoner-turned-legislator Aung San Suu Kyi, who is fighting for democracy in Myanmar. At Cosmo, a recent visit from Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg has us emulating her passion for her career as well as her family.  We admire 28-year-old LearnVest CEO Alexa von Tobel for empowering women to take control of their finances. Plenty of creatives want to be Lena Dunham, who is poised to take over Hollywood. You might idolize the Spice Girls, for all we know (and we&amp;#039;re not judging.) Aspire away, but there might be one person you&amp;#039;ve yet to consider, according to Naomi Wolf, author of the new book Vagina. &amp;quot;To me, the ideal is for women to see themselves as their role models,&amp;quot; Wolf told Cosmopolitan.com. &amp;quot;A lot of damage is done to women by a tendency in the culture to set up ideals for them. It&amp;#039;s a way to make a lot of women feel inadequate.&amp;quot; Self-described dissident feminist Camille Paglia, author of Glittering Images, laments what she perceives as &amp;quot;a real vacuum... in terms of strong role models for women.&amp;quot; &amp;quot;As a classroom teacher (at the University of the Arts), I certainly don&amp;#039;t think that Oprah, Martha Stewart, or Hillary are well-known to most college-age students,&amp;quot; she told Cosmopolitan.com. &amp;quot;It&amp;#039;s alarming, in fact, that today&amp;#039;s leading female figures and top earners are mainly entertainers, with their chaotic private lives.&amp;quot; Looking up to the likes of certain celebs, specifically Taylor Swift and Katy Perry, is not okay with Paglia. She articulated as much in a recent post for The Hollywood Reporter, saying those bubblegum (yet high-earning) babes feel &amp;quot;positively nightmarish&amp;quot; and reminiscent of the &amp;quot;white-bread 1950s,&amp;quot; a &amp;quot;rigidly conformist and man-pleasing era, when girls had to be simple, peppy, cheerful and modest.&amp;quot; (She prefers Rihanna and J. Lo, both of whom she sees as owning their sexuality.) Paglia took heat for the post, with Jezebel calling it a &amp;quot;wackadoo rant.&amp;quot; Respectfully, we questioned it, too: Didn&amp;#039;t the first wave of feminists fight for us to have the right to choose to be whoever we want, including a &amp;quot;golly gee whiz&amp;quot; country pop star with a knack for writing breakup anthems?  &amp;quot;The problem with the dated, faux-girly style of Taylor Swift and Katy Perry is that it belongs to high school,&amp;quot; Paglia told us. &amp;quot;But if young women try to take that boppy persona into the workplace, they will be marginalized forever as pretty airheads.&amp;quot;  (Even so, she acknowledges that &amp;quot;driving ambition and forceful speech help you get ahead career-wise, but they may undermine romance with men,&amp;quot; adding, &amp;quot;one reason for the worldwide success of Sex and the City was that it showed young career women confronting this problem in virtually every episode.&amp;quot;) But Wolf, who has been known to disagree with Paglia, argues that Paglia&amp;#039;s points about celeb worship are &amp;quot;idiotic.&amp;quot; &amp;quot;God bless Camille, but women are thoughtful and critical\u2014they&amp;#039;re not going to define themselves based on whoever the culture throws up,&amp;quot; she said. &amp;quot;I don&amp;#039;t even think supermodels are ideals anymore. People are like, &amp;#039;okay, that&amp;#039;s computer generated.&amp;#039;&amp;quot; Again, our feminist ideals may be right in front of us, according to political writer Natasha Vargas-Cooper. &amp;quot;The relationship you have with your mother and your friends have so much more of an influence on you than whose dress you like in Us Weekly,&amp;quot; she told Cosmopolitan.com.  Still, Cooper can&amp;#039;t help but see an ideal in First Lady Michelle Obama. &amp;quot;When I see Michelle Obama, I&amp;#039;m like, &amp;#039;You know what you&amp;#039;re doing. You&amp;#039;re fierce. You&amp;#039;re absolutely an adult woman. You&amp;#039;re feminine and tasteful and there&amp;#039;s a level of authenticity to you,&amp;quot; she said. &amp;quot;Way to go.&amp;quot; Photo Credits: Jamie McCarthy/Getty Images; Shahar Azran/WireImage; Astrid Stawiarz/Getty Images For more Michelle, follow her on Twitter @michelleruiz "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.cosmopolitan.com/entertainment/celebs/news/a4107/women-role-models/>