No Baby Unicorns: Why You’ll Never Understand a Black Woman’s Decisions If You Don’t Understand Her History
PIPER HICKMAN / WNW Member
It’s been quite a year for Black women. It began with the thrill of Amanda Gorman owning the inauguration with her presence and her poem, as well as Kamala’s confident head shake and back-straightening just before taking her VP oath. Magic, indeed.
Yet now, with the heat of the summer, other narratives are taking center stage. Literally. Sha’Carri Richardson being suspended from the US Olympic team for using marijuana then testing positive for THC, Naomi Osaka bowing out of the French Open to protect her mental health, Simone Biles excusing herself from Olympic competition to do the same—you can’t help but draw parallels between the stories behind this trifecta of amazing Black women.
Unfortunately, much of the commentary surrounding these three women hinges on disappointment at the least offensive end of the spectrum and abject racism on the other end. The main problem, as I see it, is this: whether it’s meant as innocuous or malicious, any commentary that comes from a lack of understanding the context of these women’s lives, the subtext of their current situations, and most importantly, the aggregate of what they have been through to get to where they are today should be immediately shut down. It’s this last area that gets most ignored, and it might be the most important to talk about now.
We like to idolize Black women who make it to a certain status. As we admire their performance and follow their trajectories, we root for them and call them unicorns. Mythical creatures meant to inspire and delight—that’s the expectation society places on them. So when unicorns make decisions that go against expectations, the reaction is often intense. Shock, anger, disbelief. I wonder what would happen, though, if before people reacted, they took the time to truly understand the unicorn’s path that leads to the decision. If they took the time to fully understand that no Black woman starts off as a baby unicorn. Nope, inside every unicorn is a mountain of experiences that had to be overcome first. Whether it be an abused athlete, a little girl struggling with racism, or something altogether different, these personas are at the table too when decisions get made and expectations get shattered.
If you truly want to understand a unicorn’s decisions, get to know her history. Next moves are always predicated on the ish that came before.
“We like to idolize Black women who make it to a certain status. As we admire their performance and follow their trajectories, we root for them and call them unicorns. Mythical creatures meant to inspire and delight—that’s the expectation society places on them.”
I recently listened to an episode of The Daily, The New York Times podcast, about Simone Biles. It reflected on everything she had been through as a kid, as a young athlete, and as a promising Olympic champion. Poverty, adoption, sexual assault, media onslaught, injuries on injuries—external pressures that must have helped shape her internal self-talk. To hear it all strung together into a 28-minute piece was crushing. I cried. It made me think of the times in my childhood where my race was strangely a consideration, where my presence in white spaces was questioned, where the conversation about me was about what I was, not what I was doing. Fast forward to my adult life—these themes have repeated themselves throughout my career. Often some untoward stuff went down in agencies, on sets, during pitches—stuff I don’t talk about much because it’s all pretty painful, it triggers my imposter syndrome and, if I’m honest, I think there’s a part of me that believes spending time in that headspace might kill my career mojo. And I can’t afford to lose my career mojo.
Yet I can’t help but think that maybe it’s time for me to talk about my transition into a unicorn too. The more Black women who share the accumulation of their experiences on their own road to career success, the better. Right? Also, and more importantly, I’m raising a future unicorn so this is for her.
In no certain order, here are some things advertising has thrown my way in the 2+ decades we’ve been entangled.
There’s the time I worked in-house and it was time to promote a copywriter. There were only two of us, me and a white male colleague. He had been written up on some probationary stuff, so I foolishly thought I was a shoo-in. He got promoted. I asked my white, male boss why I didn’t get it and he said, “Oh, I didn’t even think of you.”
There’s the time, on a shoot, that a male client asked my agency producer, “What’s Piper?” She told him I was a copywriter, and he clarified, “No, what is she?” He wanted clarity on my race. She got freaked out and walked away. He spent the rest of the shoot hitting on me.
There’s the time I found out (because I was dating him) that a white, male art director I worked with, who had much less experience, was making 15% more than I was.
There’s the time, on a shoot, that I would ask the white, male director questions and he would direct his answers to my white, male art director partner, making eye contact only with him.
There’s the time we needed to cast VO talent for a national retailer. A gig that would net someone well over six figures. On a conference call, I asked the owner of a casting agency to make sure to include different accents and ethnicities in the casting call. She cautioned me with, “Are you sure? You know Black people have problems with their S’s.”
“I asked the owner of a casting agency to make sure to include different accents and ethnicities in the casting call. She cautioned me with, ‘Are you sure? You know Black people have problems with their s’s.’”
There are the hundreds of times I’ve worked on a vignette spot and had to explain that the Black people shouldn’t just be playing basketball or dancing.
There are the millions of times I’ve had to have incredibly uncomfortable conversations with clients about Black talent’s hair.
There’s the time that after months of begging for a beer brief (the most coveted in the agency) I finally got one. The “urban" one, of course. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, but it spoke volumes that that was the only one I ever got.
There’s the time a CCO told a recruiter I wasn’t a good ‘cultural fit’ and that he doubted I could own a room. Then he emailed me and asked me out for drinks.
“There’s the time I was meeting with a recruiter and answering her request to tell her about myself. After talking for five or ten minutes about my love of writing and other credentials she said, ‘Does your hair do that all by itself?’”
There’s the time I had to sit through some pre-meeting banter of ‘Which would you rather be…White and fat or Black and skinny?’
There’s the time a client didn’t want to cast a dark-skinned Black male in their spot because he was, in their words, “too distracting.”
There’s the time my boss was reluctant to put a mixed-race couple in a spot for fear it would, as he said, “send the wrong message.”
There’s the time I was meeting with a recruiter and answering her request to tell her about myself. After talking for five or ten minutes about my love of writing and other credentials she said, “Does your hair do that all by itself?”
As memories go, I’m sure there’s more, but this is the list I can remember today. And I don’t enumerate them to complain, just to explain that whether conscious or subconscious, these experiences have become part of my vocational fabric. This isn’t to say that because of them I do one thing or another. But they are part of the recipe that helps inform the me that shows up on the job, day-to-day. And for anyone working with or for me, if they want to know or care, I suppose this could serve as intel into how I navigate my working self.
If you’ve read this far, thanks. And know my only hope in sharing all of this is that maybe it will inspire other unicorns in other industries to do the same. So if you happen to be one, please go for it.
Piper Hickman is a Brooklyn-based Executive Creative Director. Before returning to freelance this June, Piper was the EVP Global ECD at McCann.
Header image by Brooklyn-based artist Richard A. Chance