When two members of senior management at GYK Antler approached me with an opportunity to speak with Digiday about Misty Copeland’s partnerships ranging from Under Armour to Barbie, why brands were seeking her out, and why it matters at all, my first instinct was, “HELL YEAH!” I am a woman who has worked in advertising for the last five years. I have witnessed agencies and brands alike pull appalling stunts on behalf of women. But honestly, I (initially) said yes because I just love Misty Copeland. She’s a rock star. For those of you who aren’t familiar, or have been living under a rock, Misty Copeland is a professional ballerina who grew up in poverty, spent her childhood not knowing where she was going to sleep, if she was going to eat, and dancing to Mariah Carey to keep her spirits up. Oh yeah, and she had no experience in ballet until the age of thirteen, when most young girls are considered too developed. While on average, professional ballerinas retire between their mid thirties and early forties, Misty Copeland is 33, …

This past fall, I was contracted by Stance to be the copywriter on their biannual printed magazine, “The Uncommon Zine”, a curated journal of fashion, art, sport, travel, music, and my PERSONAL favorite, ‘tude. The zine features members from the brand’s Punks & Poets program boasting names like Willow Smith, Filipe Toledo, Big Sean, Rihanna, and more. The best part was, I got to work on the project with one of my best friends. (Important to note that while this isn’t an #ad, I was compensated for my writing, both monetarily and with a bunch of rad socks.) It was a lightning fast turn around, with only two months to write and copyedit the entire magazine, which included a 24-hour trip back to my second home in New York City, as well as an impromptu trip to San Clemente to visit Stance HQ. When you get to interview professional surfers and generally awesome and creative humans like Otis Carey, Kassia Meador, and Russ Pope, it takes the edge off of the late night writes and early morning …

Being a woman whose career has spanned advertising, social media marketing, and public relations, my feelings toward large, national, and particularly inspirational brand campaigns have been tainted. The reality is that behind every large marketing stunt telling a group of people that they’re worthy of love, or education, or even equal pay (for real though, equal pay), is a company making millions of dollars banking on the fact that their customers will relate to their brand. That their brand will feel “human”. That a new insecure consumer will surface and they’ll immediately be able to piggy back off of, and make money from, whatever self-doubt they have. That’s not to say it’s not brilliant, it’s just that as a woman working in this field, it’s hard to believe that any brand selling me on being a “strong woman” truly gives an honest shit about me being a “strong woman”. You want to sell me soap, so you’re going to tell me that the kind of beauty I possess is realistic and barefaced, natural even. You …