Glamour Girl

Christel Miller is not blond. She’s not a size zero. So the last place she expected to find herself was on the pages of Glamour magazine.

But take a look at the October issue, and there she is. Miller, a senior majoring in psychology, visual arts, and women and gender studies, was named one of the fashion magazine’s top 10 college women of 2004.

“I’m not a Barbie doll girl,” the Los Angeles native says. “I am a light-skinned African American lesbian with short, dark hair. Let’s just say I was shocked when they called to tell me I was a finalist.”

Even though Miller didn’t view herself as the ideal candidate, her father said, “You never know if you don’t try,” so she applied for the award. After interviewing with a magazine staff member in the spring, Miller all but forgot about her application. She spent the early summer on a research trip in Peru, and when she returned, she got a call that she had won the award.

In July, Miller traveled to Los Angeles for a photo shoot. “They put me up in nice hotel on Sunset Boulevard,” she recalls. “A limo driver picked me up and took me to the shoot in the Hollywood hills. We spent all day shooting, and I had my own personal hair, makeup, nails, and wardrobe stylist. It was a blast.”

Later in the summer, Miller and the nine other Glamour award recipients attended a banquet in New York City. The group visited the United Nations and took in a Broadway show. Her tour of the city also included a visit to a spa and “lots of amazing restaurants.”

Miller is labeled “the activist” by Glamour, and it’s an apt description. She’s quoted in the magazine as saying, “One person can’t do everything, but everyone can do their part.” At Rice, she has been very active in ADVANCE (Advocating Diversity and the Need for Cultural Exchange) and GATHER, the university’s new resource center for gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgendered, questioning, and ally students. She also was an Orientation Week Diversity Facilitator and produced a video on diversity at Rice that was used to train other facilitators.

“Christel is an amazing young woman,” says Catherine Clack, director of multicultural affairs at Rice and assistant dean of student affairs. “She gets involved in a lot of things, but they are carefully selected activities. She is a woman who is greatly concerned about social justice and social inequality.”

Miller struggled with issues relating to diversity when she arrived at Rice, even though she loved the school from the start. She chose Rice because of its student–teacher ratio, competitiveness, and affordability and because she knew she would have the opportunity to do undergraduate research. But she admits that “it took some adjusting to get used to the Southern drawl, the conservative politics, and the cowboy boots.”

“It’s hard for minorities, whether you are a sexual, racial, or religious minority, to survive in a conservative, homogenous environment,” she explains. “The reason I thrived is because of my close attachment to the friends I met in my college, my amazing relationships with my professors, and my involvement on campus.”

She knew that, at Rice, “I could actually make a difference, whereas at a large school, I would just be a number.” She says her biggest influences on campus have been Clack, who taught her the power of leadership and diversity; Lynne Huffer, professor of French studies, who taught her to think “outside the box”; and Mikki Hebl, associate professor of psychology and management, who harnessed Miller’s interest in psychology.

But her earliest influences were her parents, who told her always to try her best. She will take their advice as she pursues her goals of earning a joint PhD in women’s studies and psychology and a master’s of fine arts from a film school. Miller also plans on spending two years in the Peace Corps, and she hopes to ultimately teach media and film psychology at a university.

—Dana Benson