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Rikki Rogers is a writer, marketer, and career-loving parent living outside of Washington, DC.

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Rikki writes.

Feminism, marketing, business, media, and their intersections

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Why is Becoming a Hair Stylist 1000 Times More Difficult than Buying a Handgun?

rikkirogers August 27, 2020

Last night I waltzed into the salon and requested that Eve – my talented hairstylist whom I trust more than most of my own blood relatives — chop off my hair. Several hours later, after help from Eve’s lovely apprentice, Kris, I walked out a blonder, more stylish version of myself, prepared to avoid a sweaty upper back all fall.

Kris just celebrated her 22nd birthday and is a new assistant at the salon. As she was carefully removing the foil from my hair, taking every effort to avoid making the foil crinkle because, as I have to explain every new assistant, the sound of aluminum foil makes me feel like a have a parasitic twin in my ear and she’s grinding her teeth, I started asking her about the training she’ll have to receive to become a stylist.

According to Maryland law, Kris will have to apply with the state as a licensed apprentice, log 1,200 in a cosmetology school or 15 months as a registered apprentice in a licensed beauty salon. She’ll begin her apprenticeship by cutting and coloring wigs on mannequins, then eventually on friends and family with a licensed stylist watching as she does so. After she completes those apprenticeship hours, she’ll have to take a final exam to apply for a license.

Once she gets her license, she’ll have to renew it every two years and, to make sure she’s not harming people with haircuts, she’ll have to demonstrate that she’s completed 6 hours of continuing education in those two years.

Now let’s say Kris wanted to legally buy a handgun, walk into the salon, and shoot me because I didn’t tip her enough last time. (She doesn’t, and I tip well, for the record.)

If she knew the date of my next appointment, she’d have to apply for a license to buy a handgun at least seven business days in advance. Maryland has a mandatory waiting period for buying handguns. Maryland would also make Kris jump through a number of additional hoops (digital fingerprints, a background check, a short training course, a license application, proof that she puts Old Bay on her french fries, etc.). Thanks for kind of trying to keep me safe for seven-ish days, Maryland!

But let’s say Kris really just wants to get this done. She could drive 18 miles from the salon to a licensed gun dealer in Virginia, about a 25-minute trip without traffic. Once there, she could select her handgun, show her driver’s license or other documentation proving residence in Virginia, and submit her information for a background check to be completed by the following day.

Even if Kris has a history of mental health issues, she may still be able to pass the background check if that data hasn’t been reportedly properly (as was the case with Seung Hui Cho, the student who killed 32 of his classmates in 2007, and Jared Loughner, the man who killed 6 people and injured Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords in 2011). Once she passes the background check, she’d be able to walk out of the store with a gun, drive back to Maryland before the salon closes, and put a bullet in my freshly colored head.

But she still couldn’t legally cut my hair.

Listen, I was in middle school when crimping and thick bangs peaked in popularity, so I understand the long-term damage of a bad haircut, but can we agree that it’s pretty ridiculous that the vetting process for becoming a stylist is more stringent than becoming a handgun owner?

This analogy isn’t perfect, I know. Sure, Kris could kill me with scissors if she wanted to, though how far would she get before I jumped out of the chair or another stylist came to my rescue? The only way to stop a bad girl with scissors is a good girl with scissors, right?

My son just started kindergarten, and of course has heard the news of the recent mass shootings in Pittsburgh and Thousand Oaks, California. When I drop him off at the bus in the morning, I’m still overcome with emotion,  but not for the reasons I thought I would be — not because he’s grown up so fast, though he has, or because I’m worried that he’ll get teased on the bus, though I am– I’m scared of him being hurt. By a gun.

I don’t know how to solve this, but I know our government isn’t doing enough. The next time you’re sitting under the hair dryer, letting your color process, call your representative. And donate to Everytown for Gun Safety. And don’t stop being angry.

 

Empowerment Marketing | Feminism & Marketing
  • Uncategorized

The State of “Empowerment” Marketing

rikkirogers April 24, 2018

In 2014, I wrote about “female empowerment” marketing — a trend in advertising that I now recognize as the first swell of the “empowertizing” trend, presently in full force. While Dove’s “Campaign for Real Beauty” and Always’ “Like a Girl” campaigns seemed novel three years ago, it’s now difficult for me to identify a female-focused brand that is not using messages of female empowerment in some way. Every brand is hopping on the female empowerment bandwagon: Audi’s 2017 Super Bowl ad argued for equal pay for equal work (and earned the company, with its very male C-suite, some backlash), Dior produced a $710 T-shirt that proclaimed “We should all be feminists,” and, of course, at the 2014 MTV Video Music Awards show, Beyoncé did this:

Of course, since 2014, a great deal has changed. Beginning with the Women’s March and culminating in the #MeToo movement, 2017 has been a pivotal year for gender politics. (For an in-depth look at how brands are using and abusing feminist ideology, I recommend Andi Zeisler’s book We Were Feminists Once.) So, it’s worth asking, how have brands responded to the shift in gender politics in 2017? Are we truly seeing a response to the reality of evolving cultural values, or simply a shallow extension of the “empowertizing” trend that started several years ago?

If we examine major brands’ advertising efforts in 2017, a few clear patterns emerge.

Continue reading on Women’s Media Center.

  • Parenthood
  • Pop Culture

I Brought My Newborn Home on Election Night

rikkirogers October 18, 2017

I recently contributed this piece to Roar.

On November 8, 2016, I was rocking my one-day old daughter to sleep in my hospital room when my obgyn walked in on her rounds. I’m normally very deferential to doctors (or anyone in official-looking jackets and acronyms after their last names), but I asked her, in my most polite tone, if I could be discharged early. Sure, she said, this was my second baby, she wasn’t worried about me.

At home, my mother was entertaining my 4-year-old son, waiting for us to arrive from the hospital. I had a bottle of rosé in the fridge and a brand new set of white maternity pajamas laid out on my bed. I planned on sitting on my couch, nursing my newborn daughter, clasping my mother’s hand as we watched the first woman president be elected.

Of course, you know how the evening ended. I saw the look on the NBC analysts faces when they realized she could not catch up. I went to bed.

But there was no true bedtime for me. I woke every two hours to my baby’s squeaky little cry, and watched the stiff torsos of journalists confirm, and reconfirm, the election results.

When the sun came up the next morning I had a heaviness in my chest, like the edges of lungs were folding inward. I bathed my daughter in the sink, traced the ridge of her spine with my finger.

Throughout my pregnancy, I took long walks with my hands on my belly, and told her about the world I was bringing her into. When my due date came and went and my doctor scheduled my induction for the day before election night, it felt ordained. Her birth was a part of it all–of a world where a woman was in charge, where goodness and intelligence prevailed over bigotry and ignorance. Now, I rehearsed how I would explain this all to her years from now.

I deactivated Facebook and refused to watch the news. I listened to sports radio to stay awake during 3am feedings and learned about knee injuries, dislocated shoulders, salary caps.

But I couldn’t stop crying. The tears, the erratic waves of sadness that I couldn’t quite name, never stopped. I dreaded darkness: the sudden, early November evenings that lept through the trees and swallowed the sun. I recognized the symptoms–the same way I felt four years earlier when I had my first child. Back then, I tried to ignore it. I told no one, and pulled myself together every day before my husband came home from work.

But this time, I looked at my daughter looking at me.

I called my doctor. I went in the next day, told her I had postpartum depression (again) and asked for meds.

The next week, I took my daughter to the pediatrician. She was gaining weight too slowly, and, as was the case with my son, my breastmilk supply wasn’t keeping up. With my son, I worried for weeks over this, waking him up every 90 minutes to feed him, refusing to supplement with formula until the pediatrician ordered me to. This time, I stopped by Target on the way home to pick up formula, bottles, and a few magazines for myself.

Something had changed. On walks with my daughter, I started yelling back at catcallers. “I”m with my daughter, you asshole.” I called out racist comments at family events, even if the offender was old or nice or loving. A few months later, I went back to work. I was happy to be using my brain again, but I found that I could no longer tolerate the company owner’s casual sexism. So I quit.

I joined a company with values reflective of my own. I called my representatives. Since I couldn’t leave the baby long enough to protest, I donated. I started writing again.

I tried to practice mindfulness, to savor each ordinary moment with my baby. The first year goes by so fast, I know.

Moments before I pushed my daughter into the world, I told my husband I had never felt any more or any less like a woman. I was going through one of the defining acts of womanhood, yet every element of my femininity was suppressed. Hooked up to machines, body exposed and sexless. And yet, inside my abdomen, my little baby girl was curled up, her own abdomen already carrying 2 million oocytes, the precursors to eggs, the building blocks of two generations in my belly. The responsibility was dizzying. And two days later, as I sat on my couch, not drinking rosé, not watching our country elect a woman who was so clearly prepared to lead, I felt like I had already let her down.

Now, almost a year later, I’m assembling her baby book, looking back at the pictures chronicling her growth. Each of her milestones is tethered to some effort deadset on dragging us backward. She slept through the night for the first time–the Muslim ban. She crawled–Charlottesville. She said her first word–Puerto Rico. I’ll never be able to separate these two histories, try as I might.

She’s a different human being now (aren’t we all?) and she’ll grow up with politics mapped to her body. The work will be her work, and there’s a lot to do. But I feel the same way today that I did a year ago, walking my pregnant belly around my neighborhood, willing her out: exhausted, powerful, hopeful.

how to shop without supporting marketplace feminism
  • Marketing
  • Pop Culture

Smart shopping in a marketplace feminist world

rikkirogers September 16, 2017

Since Beyonce and Taylor Swift made feminism cool a few years ago, and even more so since the ultimate embodiment of toxic masculinity waltzed into the White House, we’ve seen a surge in marketplace feminism–companies using seemingly feminist messages to market and sell their products or services. 

For a comprehensive look into marketplace feminism, read Andi Zeisler’s We Were Feminists Once. But you won’t need to look far to find examples of marketplace feminism, whether it’s Nordstrom selling a “feminist t-shirt” for $30 or Dove’s “Real Beauty” campaign or L’Oreal celebrating “boldness” on “National Lipstick Day,” brands have learned that they can move product by weaving feminist-leaning messages into their products.

Read More "Smart shopping in a marketplace feminist world"

#whywemarch
  • Pop Culture

#WhyWeMarch

rikkirogers January 22, 2017

If your feed is like mine, you’ve spent the last few days scrolling through powerful images of men and women standing up for equality and human rights. Every witty sign and every story about a woman taking her first step into activism has warmed my heart. And then I see images like this one. And I remember that there are still far too many people who embrace archaic, ridiculous, asinine conceptions of women and gender and who allow those ideas to inform every personal and professional decision they make. They won’t be silent, so neither can we. We will always be funnier. Smarter. Louder. #whywemarch#whywewillkeepmarching

Leadership
  • Corporate Culture
  • Working It

Want to Make the World a Better Place? Start By Being a Better Leader.

rikkirogers May 25, 2016

As a mother, I spend a lot of time thinking about the culture my son will grow up in. And lately, my analysis has been somewhat grim. The most pressing cultural issues seem like problems that I simply can’t address. I’m not a lawmaker, a psychologist, or a social worker. I’m the Chief Strategy Officer for a marketing and PR firm, and I struggle to keep up with the latest parenting research, much less strategies for saving the world.

I’m guessing many company leaders feel the same way. Our job is to generate revenue and grow our businesses—it’s somebody else’s job to fix America’s biggest problems, right?

But, it turns out, that’s not the right way to look at it. A growing body of research shows that the workplace is actually a realistic space to begin initiating cultural change.

Read More "Want to Make the World a Better Place? Start By Being a Better Leader."

  • Parenthood
  • Working It

Why I’m Not Upset about “Meternity Leave”

rikkirogers April 29, 2016

The social sphere is abuzz today with responses to Meghann Foye‘s first book, Meternity.  The novel focuses on a woman who fakes a pregnancy in order to take a “meternity leave,” an opportunity to decompress and reflect on her career and life.

Foye’s own life apparently inspired the book. Foye writies in the New York Post, “As I watched my friends take their real maternity leaves, I saw that spending three months detached from their desks made them much more sure of themselves. One friend made the decision to leave her corporate career to create her own business; another decided to switch industries. From the outside, it seemed like those few weeks of them shifting their focus to something other than their jobs gave them a whole new lens through which to see their lives.”

Naturally, mothers across the internet became enraged. “Maternity leave is not a vacation!” they shouted from their mobile devices. One user in my Facebook feed responded, “I honestly want her to take my kids for a day and then tell me how she feels. Horrible!” and another furiously explained, “Maternity leave is not a time for lunch and getting pedicures. It’s a 24/7 selfless time to care for a brand new human being making sure you keep them alive that is totally helpless.”

Read More

  • Pop Culture

Remembering Robbin Thompson

rikkirogers February 15, 2016

robbin_thompson_band_the_national-0022Dear Music Lovers of the World,

As we gear up for the 2016 Grammy’s, I have a small request. Take a moment to remember an amazing musician who, like 99% of the world’s most talented musicians, never made it to the Grammy stage but nevertheless made a global impact.

Read More

workplace wellbeing
  • Corporate Culture

Wellbeing in the Workplace

rikkirogers February 9, 2016

Over the weekend I attended an event called Radical Wellbeing, hosted by Deepak Chopra and Danielle Posa.

I have an article forthcoming in The Muse about how changing our corporate cultures is the first step–and perhaps the most efficient method–of changing our national culture. It’s a bold statement, but I think it’s true. Approximately 96%(ish) of us spend most of our waking hours at a job, and the way employees feel about their work has a dramatic impact on their overall happiness and, consequently, how they behave in the world. If we want to make lasting change in our culture (less violence, more kindness)

I’ll write more about what employers and corporate leaders can do to promote wellbeing in the workplace in my article for The Muse, but for now I want to share a few key takeaways from the event.

Read More

  • Marketing
  • Social Media

5 Organizations that Will Rebrand in 2016

rikkirogers September 25, 2015

brandingMost of us haven’t even started to think about the New Years Resolutions we’ll set and them promptly abandon in early 2016. But brands are deep into media and marketing planning season, thinking about the moves they’ll make in 2016. And many of them will decide that they need the marketing equivalent of a full-body cleanse: a rebrand.

Here are my predictions for the organizations that will rebrand next year (and how they’ll do it):

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