Meet Youngest Female Self-Made Billionaire

The likes of Carlos Slim and Warren Buffett are getting their due attention with the release of latest Forbes list, but Sara Blakely is getting her share as well. The 41-year-old Florida native is on the cover, in fact, after earning the distinction of being the youngest self-made female billionaire, notes the Tampa Bay Times. She is the owner and founder of Spanx, which makes "shapewear" slimming undergarments. (For men, too.) The Forbes profile credits her with "reinventing the girdle."

Jezebel has a slightly different take, saying her "ingenious idea" was to "combine insecurity, enormous underpants, and elastic sausage casings." Still, her net worth of $1 billion isn't bad considering she started the company in her 20s when she had all of $5,000 to her name. "I can't hear that I am on that list without laughing," Blakely tells the Tampa newspaper. "I can't help but think of the days when my job was to cold call people in Clearwater to try and sell them fax machines and how many of them said, 'No, no, no.'" (More billionaires stories.)