Looking left, then right

When Amy Holmes '94 was an undergraduate at Princeton, she founded an animal rights group called "Ahimsa" — a Hindu word meaning "peace to all creatures." She distributed leaflets opposing animal testing and organized vegetarian nights at a local health food store. In 1992, she voted for Bill Clinton.

This past April, Holmes leapt to national prominence when she was listed in People Magazine as one of the world's 50 most beautiful people.

Holmes had been beautiful at Princeton — beautiful and liberal. Now she was beautiful and conservative. She was a regular talking head on PBS and the Fox News Channel. She was one of Bill Maher's regular sparring partners on ABC's "Politically Incorrect." Something had changed.

Holmes' political metamorphosis was not typical for a 20-something. Neither was her reaction to the People Magazine article.

"It was really upsetting," she said. "It felt like this big two-ton weight was put in my hands."

Holmes was already something of a celebrity. Her prominent position at the Independent Women's Forum — a conservative policy think tank — had made her one of Washington's up-and-coming political pundits.

But now her friends and colleagues were advising her to get an agent, to use the exposure as leverage to further her career.

"It raised the bar so high," Holmes said. "I don't lead some fabulous life."

The liberal had become a conservative. The policy-minded intellectual had become a the subject of a glamorous photo spread. A lot had changed for Holmes since she left Princeton.

In only five years, Holmes had advanced from making photocopies at the Independent Women's Forum to becoming the organization's most prominent spokesperson. In addition to appearing regularly on television, Holmes is a columnist for USA Today and Voter.com. She has been featured in Harper's Bazaar, Mademoiselle and Newsweek. Most recently, Holmes, who is African American, was featured in Honey magazine — a new publication aimed at black women.

Holmes puts a fresh face on political analysis. She speaks with self-assurance, energy and candor. And her political points of view are as "unexpected and unpredictable" as her life has been.

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At Princeton, Holmes majored in economics and wrote her thesis on the recording industry. When she graduated, she had "no idea" what she wanted to do with her life. And so she went home to Seattle to work in music video production.

Then in 1995, she moved to Washington, D.C., where she ended up working for the IWF, which is known for taking more conservative positions than other women's groups.

"I thought, 'Wow, these are real live conservatives,' " Holmes said, laughing.

At IWF, Holmes has, among other projects, campaigned for legislation that would require pregnant women to be tested for HIV.

"Babies were dying," she said, explaining that pregnant women were not being tested or informed of new techniques to diminish the risk of transmission of the virus from mother to fetus. "It was amazing to see how a public campaign worked."

Holmes also put her economics degree to use at IWF, studying the wage gap between men and women, which, she said, shrinks as more factors are accounted for.

"It was being used as a way to characterize our culture as riddled with systematic sex discrimination," she explained. "That description of American culture didn't hold up."

Working at IWF, she began to reevaluate her political beliefs.

"I started to realize that I had a lot more sympathy for conservatives than I thought," she recalled.

Now a registered independent, Holmes refuses to be pigeon-holed. "The new women's movement will recognize that women are not a monolith, that we have very different ideas about what we want to do personally," she said. "We have different ideas about politics. Not every woman supports liberalism."

Holmes has never voted Republican, but anticipates she will vote for George W. Bush in the next election.

"It'll be kind of like a strange moment when and if I do," she said.

Why the change from theDemocrats to the G.O.P.?

"Oh, Al Gore is unbearable," she said. "He's a just complete, unbearable weirdo." Aesthetics aside, she said she identifies more with the Republican platform.

"Policy-wise, I support George Bush. He has a real vision," she said, explaining that she agrees with Bush that education is the number one social issue in America.

"On racial issues, Al Gore really worries me," she said. "His fiery rhetoric is divisive and balkanizing. It worries me that he clings to his vision of civil rights not so much because it will help the situation as he thinks it reflects on his enlightenment. I think that George Bush is much more humble in his approach."

Though Holmes' political views have evolved quite a bit since her days as an animal rights activist at Princeton, she still holds to at least one old liberal tenet: She supports a woman's right to have an abortion, though she believes there ought to be "some restrictions."

"Really, the center of the Democratic party is where I have more sympathy on this particular issue," she said. "Unfortunately, Al Gore has gone off the reservation on that."

Even on this issue, Holmes presents her admittedly liberal position with a right-of-center spin. The abortion issue, she says — echoing a classic conservative line — is only a symptom of a deeper societal problem.

"I think we need to address the sexual culture where so many women are left to make the decision alone, and I appreciate the center of the Republican party for being willing to shed light on the underlying sexual culture that we find ourselves in," she said. She pointed to Princeton's social scene as an example of this negative sexual climate.

"After going through four years of the hookup culture at Princeton, all of my female friends were made less happy by it," she said.

She said the sexual climate at the 'Street' fueled a negative environment in which many women had poor self-images and eating disorders.

"I tried to control my food intake as well," she said. "It was a way to raise a woman's status."

But despite this negative aspect of social life at Princeton, Holmes said she loved the University. Switching gears, she spoke enthusiastically of her involvement as a Theta and Tigerlily.

"Do I sound really girly?" she asked, laughing quietly. "I regard myself as a feminist because I believe in the equality of men and women, intellectually, legally, in our aspirations." And as she said this, the tone of her voice changed from chit-chatty to professional.

"I want to be successful in the public sphere, but I also want to be a mom and a wife and honor and cherish those roles in my life," she said. "I think feminism has made this false separation of the two. I think the new feminism is going to recognize and respect that women want to pursue a number of different roles in their lives and that you can have everything, but not necessarily at the same time."

Holmes hopes to have her own television program like the Charlie Rose show some day — or, at the very least, appear as an extra in HBO's "Sex in the City."

She met a producer for HBO during a roundtable discussion for Newsweek recently.

"I was like, 'Get me on "Sex in the City"! I'll just like be one of the cocktail people in the background. I'll just be a party-goer.' It would be so awesome. I was like, 'Do I have to wear my own clothes, or can I get them to put something just fabulous on me?' "

It seems she is getting used to stardom.

"I love photo shoots," she confided. "I understand now why celebrities get addicted."

As for the People Magazine article, Holmes never bought a copy. But now, at least, she can laugh about it: "I hope all my ex-boyfriends see it," she said.

She did, however, eventually get an agent — President Shapiro's son-in-law — and she is now in the process of working with him to launch a career in television journalism. It's a long way from making photocopies.