Let the damsels weep in their beer about being stressed out, because Smart Sensuality women like Katie Couric and Lynn Wyatt are up for the challenges of life. The March 2010 issue of Harper’s Bazaar features Katie Couric looking as fierce as Demi Moore.

Call her a ‘cougar’ if you must Huff Po. Smart Sensuality women like Couric don’t mind being dames, babes and using every trump card in their arsenals to be effective 21st century females and turning back the erosion of women’s rights in America that damsels embrace.

Katie Couric in May 2010 Harper’s Bazaar

When sexy, successful women have no heart, as Katie Couric displayed buckets of, on the ground in Haiti, walk away. You’re looking at a Modern woman who not only looks the part, but seeks the Tin Man with a big bonus. She’s empty inside, and you have every right to rain on her parade.

Put brains, beauty, sex appeal, courage and heart in the brew and you’re looking at the best kind of female.

Fine, let every woman be who she wants to be. There are plenty of men who like weak women. We know the poor-unlucky-me girl Jennifer Aniston has a legion of fans lending female life support on yet another love-affair gone south.

We’ll take respect. American women may not coo over Angelina Jolie, especially in the never-ending menage-a-tois of Aniston - Pitt - Jolie, but they respect her and find her formidable.

We’re putting Katie Couric, Demi Moore, Meryl Streep, Angelina Jolie and all the Smart Sensuality women on a pedestal, because somebody’s got to fight for the moxie girls, the women who unapologetically celebrate being sophisticated, intelligent femmes in action around the world.

Tears are rarely in our arsenal. Couric calls herself a joyful person. “I mean, hello? Yes. I am. I am! And unashamed that I’m not cynical or dark or ironic.”

Bazaar describes the quality, Katie Couric’s ‘strength behind the sweet’. Think Hepburn, Bacall and Beyonce.

Frankly, I like this Smart Sensuality version of Katie Couric, and so does Washington Post writer Robin Givhan. We’ve noticed the past year that Givhan’s been doing some real heavy lifting in writing about women.

Love or hate her pov, reality hits home when consistently Givhan is setting the agenda topic and women bloggers and columnists are responding yeah or nea. All we want are some real women with defined opinions and Givhan is stepping up to the plate.

Why do you think Sarah Palin has such a following?

Talking about the face off trouble-makers seek between Diane Sawyer and Couric, she says with age and maturity, “the brouhaha just seems silly,” adding, “I think we like each other a lot.” I missed Sawyer’s ‘Good Morning America’ going-away video in which ABC’s chief investigative correspondent, Brian Ross, pretends to burst in on Couric in her office, while she’s making out with Sawyer’s hsuband Mike Nichols.

Couric remains mum about Palin in her Bazaar interview, saying that she’ll talk about the interview ‘someday’.

In an update on her life, we get a Harper’s Bazaar refresh:

It was almost 12 years ago that Couric’s husband, attorney and NBC News legal analyst Jay Monahan, died of colon cancer. He was just 42. “He didn’t get to see my daughter going to college and my younger daughter taking singing lessons,” she says mournfully. Ellie, 18, is a Yale freshman; Carrie, 14, is at school in New York City and at that age when “sometimes they just don’t want you in the same zip code. Don’t you remember being 14? I used to make my parents drop me off blocks away from whatever location I was headed to. You see books at Barnes & Noble like How to Hug a Porcupine. You can’t take it personally.”

As for dating ecopreneur Brooks Perlin for the past three years, Katie has fighting words for the term ‘cougar’.

“I just find it stupid, you know? I think it also surmises that the older woman is always the pursuer. That’s not necessarily true. I always say that maybe the older woman is the prey and someone else is the predator. It’s just silly.”

You got that right, Katie. And this is where Robin Givhan is getting some young woman’s wisdom. Describing the Harper’s Bazaar photos of Francois Dischinger, Givhan notes:

There’s nothing reserved or hesitant in the sex appeal on display in the four-page story about Couric. The images are a full-throated, even exaggerated, rebuke of the notion that a woman must dress in a prescribed manner — Suze Orman suits, full-coverage blouses, sensible heels — to protect her IQ, her résumé and her place in a male-dominated work culture.

Is Couric dressed in a manner appropriate for a network anchor? These images demand that viewers define — or redefine — their terms.

Katie Couric in Harper’s Bazaar, March 2010Givhan correctly digs beneath the surface, acknowledging the very real components of life for women in business.

Yet there’s a particular brand of power-positioning at play when a woman walks confidently into a room in a pair of heels that make those who’d be suffering vertigo blanch: How can she walk in those? Pure grit — that’s the explanation. And yes, please infer that if those four-inch stilettos don’t draw tears from the woman wearing them, then neither will some ambitious colleague’s backstabbing ways. Fashion, in this sense, is power.

Smart Sensuality women understand the key facts. The patriarchy is firmly entrenched and must be confronted. I predict a global blacklash against women, grounded both in fundamentalism, declining fertility rates among women in developed countries, and religion’s global battle for top-dog status.

I’ve read all the futurist reports about women and the 21st century. Yes, we will be educated and economically-empowered. We will also remain on the patriarchy’s tighter lease until we decide to devote ourselves to politics and changing the law for women.

Smart Sensuality true-grit women are necessary right now, more than ever. The world doesn’t need damsels, no matter what the patriarchy tells us. Now about the matriarchy.

In America, for every guy in the doorway, there’s two women at your back — more often than not. All this talk of the ‘Sex and the City’ sisterhood doesn’t hold water in real life. It’s a myth.

I’m glad to see Givhan acknowledge this female in her opinion piece. The sooner American women (in contrast to Scandinavian, as an example) stop vying to be Miss America and the only woman in the boardroom, the better. Until then, we’re fighting for the same tarnished tiara.

Maybe when we’re 80, we cougars will slip off our stilettoes. Then again, they’re so much more fun than running shoes. Anne

In Harper’s Bazaar photos, Katie Couric is a power broker in Louboutins Washington Post

Robin Givhan Sees Liberation in Katie Couric’s Heels (And Miniskirts) Jezebel

Photos Huffington Post