A new Gallup poll has Michelle Obama as the U.S.’s most-admired woman, breaking Hillary Clinton’s 16-year streak. Obama’s husband Barack was the most-admired man for the 11th consecutive year. See also the story in Slate. Both stories mention that this is Obama’s first time atop the women’s list, but neither mentions whether this is the first time a husband-wife team topped both lists.

Some other notable results from the survey:

• Hillary Clinton has topped the list 22 times, more than any other woman OR man.
• Queen Elizabeth has been fifty times been in the Top 10.
• Oprah Winfrey has never been first, but has been second 14 times.
• Barack Obama is second only to Dwight Eisenhower in number of first-place finishes (for men).
• TAINTUS joins Gerald Ford as the only sitting presidents not to top the men’s list.

While these results are interesting to me, as a matter of curiosity, I am more interested in a few broader questions. Namely:

• WHY are these people admired?
• Who do I admire, and why?
• Who do you admire, and why?

Why?

The actual question posed by surveyers reads thusly (with “man” substituted in the men’s question):

“What woman that you have heard or read about, living today in any part of the world, do you admire most? And who is your second choice?”

The definition of admire, if you’re curious, is:

“Regard with respect or warm approval.”

I list both the question and the definition to make sure we’re all talking about the same things here. Knowing these, and looking at the full list of results (.pdf), we get a clear picture on the priorities of average U.S. citizens.

Almost all the men listed are either ridiculously wealthy or powerful or both. There are a few entertainers on the full list (Michael Jordan and Brad Pitt, for example), and a handful of religious personalities (the Pope, Joel Osteen, etc.), but they are the exceptions. The only scientist to make the men’s list was Stephen Hawking — and he doesn’t count because he’s dead (see “living” in the question).

The women’s list also includes political figures, including the Queen of England and the startlingly looney Michele Bachman, but is notably different than the men’s list in that it includes a greater percentage of entertainers and activists. There are heavyweight TV personalities like Winfrey and Ellen DeGeneres, notable actors like Scarlett Johansson and Angelina Jolie, pop stars like Jennifer Lopez and Beyoncé Knowles, and activists like Malala Yousafzai. The women’s list also included a journalist, a supermodel, an author, a poet, and two Supreme Court Justices — none of which appeared on the men’s list. (Some of the men have authored books and/or poems, but none of them are primarily known for those efforts.) Another thing the women’s list included that the men’s list didn’t is family members of powerful people — spouses, children, etc. Like the men’s list, the women’s list only included one scientist (Jane Goodall).

All of this tells me that we (the average “we”) admire different things in men than we do in women.

When it comes to men, we almost exclusively value wealth and political influence — Obama, TAINTUS, senators, CEOs, and religious shamans. But when it comes to women, we’re looking less at those things and more at character, intelligence, creativity, and — at least in a few cases — appearance.

To be clear, there are people on both lists that I “regard with respect or warm approval”. I hope that I do so for laudable reasons: they’re working (or have worked) to make the world a better place for all of us, for example.

Without being a mind-reader, I can’t say exactly why each person appeared on these lists, but we can certainly make assumptions based on who appeared on the list. Several of the people have never done anything to make the world a better place; they’re known only for being powerful/wealthy. It’s also no secret that a favorite American pasttime is admiring rich people — Lifestyles Of The Rich And Famous comes to mind. We’ve so often used the word “success” to mean “getting rich” that now most people assume that’s what you mean by the word — instead of its more literary meaning: achieving a goal.

Some of them boggle my mind, of course; their only notable achievements have been making the world a worse place. I can’t begin to estimate why a great number of U.S. residents admire them.

Who Do I Admire? And Why?

My most-admired person would not be a famous or wealthy person; it would be my spouse — and I assume the same is true for many of my readers. Because it’s difficult to live with someone for many years if you don’t regard them with respect or warm approval.

I’m convinced more people would admire my wife if they knew her better. Despite being the child of immigrants from a not-very-well-off country and not being wealthy — or perhaps because of that — she became an achiever. She earned entrance into an elite and exlusive public high school, then one of the top 25 liberal arts colleges in the nation, and then one of the country’s most notable universities. In the middle of that, she dealt with her mother’s death from cancer. Now she helps others. Her entire job for a dozen years has been giving other people tools to improve their own lives; currently she works with U.S. soldiers at a state-of-the-art traumatic brain injury clinic. Somehow, like the superhero she is, she also manages to be a nearly-full-time mother and wife, driving herself to the hospital while about to give birth, cooking for our family, and overseeing our household.

Also on my list are the Obamas, but not because they achieved wealth or lived in the White House for eight years. It’s because of what they put up with while there, the grace with which they handled it, and their continuing efforts to channel their visibility into improving people’s lives.

During my life, different well-known names have slipped into and out of my personal list, for different reasons. Many times, the name shows up on my list due to some achievement, but then as I learn more about them, or more about the world, I cease to admire them so much. For example, I (like millions of Americans) once admired Bill Cosby. How wrong we were.

But I think most of the people I admire are general categories of people rather than specific famous people. To illustrate, I have been known to say “Working single parents are superheroes.” Not all of them, obviously — surely some of them are horrible. But having strived for eight years to raise two children, I know I couldn’t have done very well without the help of my wife. Anyone even moderately successful at raising children while also having to work — and doing it without a live-in partner — is doing massively more than either my wife or I have ever had to attempt.

In a similar vein, I admire people who can regularly put their own safety and/or well-being at risk for someone else’s benefit. It’s no surprise to me that firefighters are regularly hailed as “heroes” (even if that word is too-often overused these days). I was fortunate, during my time at a small-town newspaper, to get to know many local firefighters, both staff and volunteer. Some were incredibly well-trained with dozens of years of experience; others were brand new. All of them were underpaid, and all faced fearful circumstances with grim determination.

Another kind of person I admire is the type who can be really, truly great at something, yet manage to not talk about it all the time — and be interested in what other people are doing. In my experience, this doesn’t happen very often. Many of the people I’ve known who truly excel at something tend to focus on that one thing an awful lot, often at the exclusion of all else. When a different subject pops up, it’s clear that they lose interest. But a few are different, and it can be impressive.

But I also often wonder how many of these qualities are praiseworthy, in the sense that these people did this. In other words, if I’m really smart and a really hard worker, that isn’t really something I chose, is it? The smarts are (as far as we know) determined by both genetics and environmental factors; no one lives dumb for 20 years and then heroically decides to be smart. A strong work ethic tends to follow the same pattern — there’s a possibility of genetic influence, but most people who are considered hard workers attribute it to their upbringing. Though I do tend to respect and admire the tendency, I have to admit to myself that I couldn’t become a lazy worker even if I wanted to; it’s just how my personality is built.

Who Do You Admire? And Why?

This question is kind of implied by the blog entry, I suppose. But I want to say that I’m curious. Feel free to leave a list in the comment. But I think I’m more curious about the why than the actual names.