We often associate female ambition and ambitious women with women like Elle Woods from Legally Blonde that have created successful careers and forged their own path despite the men around them. In many ways this is correct. Elle Woods IS an ambitious woman that works towards what she wants and gets it despite a male-driven workforce, but Elle Woods is not the only kind of ambitious woman out there. Ambition does not have to be career-driven; instead, it is what a woman wants and works towards in her life. It is a woman that chooses to fight for her desires despite society’s expectations.
Female ambition is whatever a woman wants to define it as. It may be a single mother with an ambition to find a job that can support her children while also giving her time to spend time with them, an activist that works endlessly to create equality, a social worker who strives to help as many children and women in unsafe homes and create options to shelter them. Most importantly, it can be a woman that strives to marry rich so that she can enjoy traveling the world and a lifestyle that gives her freedom, or a prostitute that loves her job and the control that being her own boss gives her.
Many people, women included, will disagree with my examples of female ambition, and they are free to. What we associate with female ambition will change depending on our culture, our ideals, and our society. But ultimately what matters is that what you want to be, or what your ambition is, is that you take a hold of that and work towards the person you want to become. An ambitious woman is a woman that has worked to achieve happiness and to become their best self whatever they define that as.
After all, Elle Woods is not just her career. She is a woman that loves fashion, stands up for herself and other women, and works to become her best self every day.