On September 8, Mother Jones published an article about me. (I’m not linking to it, you can go find it if you want.) It seems to be the follow up to the one they did on Riley Gaines back in February, which I wrote about here.
They consider this piece on me a takedown. I take it a compliment. No one writes hit pieces on you if you aren’t having an impact.
Its primary accusation? I have a business and I want it to grow and make money and be profitable. The horror!
I am guilty as charged. I sell clothes. The business is growing. I want it to keep growing and be profitable. I think that’s what a business is for. I like to pay people fairly. I want them to be able to build careers. Support their families. Have the chance to make a lot more money in the future. I want them to have happy lives, and feel like they can do work that they care about, that contributes to the world, that doesn’t force them to hide their beliefs and values, and that yes, pays them a salary!
I think Mother Jones would agree that is what a business is and should be. They would have no issue with a business doing just that if they espoused a viewpoint Mother Jones found acceptable.
By their own admission, Mother Jones spent months producing “The Woman Profiting Off the WNBA’s Trans Panic.” That’s me, in case you were wondering. I’m the woman.
The entire moral architecture of the article is that I had been “waiting for an athlete like Sophie Cunningham” and was “ready to capitalize.” They note that after Cunningham said she wanted to protect young girls in locker rooms and sports, our sales “increased sixfold,” including selling nearly 7,000 T-shirts.
If this took months to uncover, they need new investigators. I said all of this publicly. It’s not hard to find. I tweeted that we’ve been waiting for a pro athlete like Cunningham from my own account on July 22. Amazing research MJ! You followed my X account!
We did sell a lot of tees and other logo gear. In a short period of time, the logo became a symbol of the movement to protect women’s sports. People bought the tee (and other items) to say they support fair competition. Great.
I did say publicly that we (the movement) have been waiting for an athlete like Sophie Cunningham. Before she spoke out, I often noted that not a single currently competing pro or Olympic athlete has spoken in defense of protecting the women’s category; even though not a single Olympic athlete spoke out against the new IOC rule announced in March. They didn’t push back because they support it. But they weren’t comfortable saying so out loud. Because the bullies attack.
Then Sophie did it.
What I meant when I said we were waiting for someone like Sophie was that we want and need a currently competing professional or Olympic level athlete with fame and popularity. To demonstrate that our message is normal and to give it heft and gravitas and push it into mainstream culture. Because, the fact is, our message and our POV is the “normal” one but the bullies on the other side (the minority, I might add) have effectively silenced and censored the normies. No more.
I also said we were ready for a moment like this. What I meant by that: we (the brand) have inventory. We have agility and we can chase more inventory. That’s it.
Devious, huh? Or standard business-y stuff?
Mother Jones treats revenue as original sin. When its us, anyway. Fine. I’ll take the charge.
But it’s funny isn’t it . . . these types never accuse rainbow merch purveyors of grift? Where are their accusatory rainbow-washing articles?
They have never accused Nike — with all its woke marketing campaigns that have nothing to do with the shoes — of grift. Not with Colin Kaepernick, despite the fact that he’d been on Nike’s roster for years and they never used him until he knelt, though his playing was already going down the tubes. He wasn’t a star athlete but BLM was ascendant so it made sense for Nike to pounce. Otherwise known as capitalizing on the moment. Was that grift? Was that not “waiting for an athlete like . . .” Did they not descend as soon as they saw an opening for featuring Kaepernick to drive interest and sales of Nike? Why yes, they did.
What about when Nike featured Dylan Mulvaney in a sports bra? Granted, it didn’t work. It hurt the business rather than help it. But was it not an attempt to “capitalize” on his popularity? Popularity that put Bud Light into a downward spiral, which was certainly not the intent. Or would Mother Jones’ argument be: they knew Mulvaney would not be popular, and for that reason it was not a grift it was “doing the right thing”?
In which case, why aren’t they still using Kaepernick AND Mulvaney? If they are so interested in “doing the right thing” why are they dressing sorority girls during rush week and not deploying Mulvaney in more sports bra ads?
It seems obvious to me that the actual grift is staying in corporate America and saying the approved things, even if you don’t believe them. Performing the approved feelings, even when you don’t feel them. Reading the approved Corporate Communications written speeches, even when you don’t agree with them. Saying things like “merit is racist” when HR says to do so, even if you know that is dumb.
Every CEO who doesn’t speak in their own voice, who pushes that feeling aside that they are saying things they don’t believe — that is a grift. And they are rewarded handsomely for it.
For me, not speaking in my own voice, and taking gobs of money for not meaning it, is just something I can’t really do. I’m allergic to it. It would make me feel bad. Yucky. Like a liar. And a grifter.
That path was worth millions a year — three, ten, twenty, maybe even more, depending on how high I could have climbed and how quiet I would have stayed. And how enthusiastically I performed the speeches.
I’ve told this story many times, probably to you all, but I’ll tell it once more. When I was interviewing for a CEO job of an $8B retailer in 2023, I was asked by the HR “expert” on the board if I would apologize for what I’d done. “What I’d done” was advocate for open public schools during covid. I said no. If I’d said yes, I would have likely gotten the job. I’d already had about 8 rounds of interviews. This was the last one. If I’d said yes, I’d have gotten it (maybe/probably) and I would have had to perform the apology and then I could do the job. I couldn’t do it.
Here’s an example of what a CEO makes, so you know I’m not exaggerating about the scale of the potential wealth. Here’s two examples, in fact.
The former CEO of Levi’s — Chip Bergh — who led the company from 2011-2024 easily made $150M over his tenure, likely significantly more. This is about $12M/year but doesn’t fully account for realized gains from options and pre-IPO SARs. This is all in public documents. It’s in Levi’s 10-Ks (2011–2018 compensation tables) and DEF 14A proxies (2019–2025), plus WWD reporting for 2012–2013.
Arguably Bergh deserved it, I’m not saying he didn’t. When he started in the role the company was near bankruptcy. Levi’s revenue in 2010, the year before he started, was $4.4B, down about $3B from it’s peak. When he retired in 2024, Levi’s revenue was over $6B and he had led a successful IPO in 2019. He added close to $2B to the top line. No shade. He added value for shareholders and he made money for himself while doing it.
Now, lets do John Donahoe, former short-lived CEO of Nike. This one is way worse because the company is much bigger. Hold on to your hat.
Donahoe started in January 2020 (yikes, rough timing, no doubt) and his tenure ended in October 2024.
He collected on the order of $100 million+ in reported compensation over the course of nearly 4 years (we’ll call that $25M/year on the conservative side), all while the stock went from a pandemic-era high near $180 to the $70s–$90s by the time he left. The company’s market value finished his run tens of billions below where it started and ~$100 billion below the peak. His pay was front-loaded and equity-heavy. Needless to say, the market did not pay him the same compliment on the way out.
That said, I have no idea what values driven nonsense Donahoe spewed. He did run a terrible covid ad. Mulvaney’s sports bra campaign was under his leadership though I doubt he ever saw it before it was live.
The point here is: as CEO of a major established company, you make shit tons of money whether you perform well or not. Say the things, fake the values, get the money.
But with a start up, there are no guarantees. You might fall on your face. You might put more money in it than you ever recoup. You certainly put in more sweat equity than you could have ever fathomed was even possible. You might find yourself crawling around on the floor folding product to load into the sample closet, pushing suitcases up hills to sell at events attended by 32 people but still require paid security because you say true things that make people mad. You might work 12, 14, sometimes 18 hour days, with no days off and no bonuses and no assistant. You’ll fly coach like normal people and you’ll manage your own calendar and travel and stay in low budget motels and share rooms with your colleagues to save money. All with no guarantees. You might do it, one might argue, because you care. Because you care about female athletes and women’s sports and you’ll sacrifice to try to make a difference and influence the cultural conversation.
Just sayin’.
What annoys me with the “grift” allegation is it questions intent. Say you disagree with my viewpoint. But why question my intent? If you look at the arc of my life it seems pretty clear I do things when I believe in them. Whether it is writing a book about abuse in sport, making a documentary about the same, advocating for open schools during covid . . . or starting this business. Say you disagree with me all day long. But questioning my intentions is lazy and provably false.
I started a company at an age when most people are planning the exit. When most people (who spent their adult life in corporate America at a senior level) are planning a few lucrative board seats, long vacations and a second or maybe even a third home.
I work my ass off every day. I put my own money in the business (and the film Generation Covid which will come out in October) and I have no guarantee of getting any of it back.
I say exactly what I think every day: sex is binary, men are not women, girls deserve fair sports and private spaces. There is such a thing as truth and reality and no amount of activism or ideology changes it.
Then I make product people want to wear. Not merch. We design it all. The fabrics, the fits, all of it. We make high performance training gear and yes some t-shirts and hoodies for casual occasions and saying the quiet part out loud.
Sue me. I’m a capitalist.
Businesses that work create jobs, pay vendors — in our case many local to the Denver area and within the US, fund causes if they want to (not required!) and don’t require a donor form every three paragraphs (check out any Mother Jones article).
Mother Jones calls itself a nonprofit. Its parent, the Center for Investigative Reporting, pulled in about $27.5 million in 2025, more than $22 million of that in grants and contributions. They beg at the top of every article. The CEO makes nearly $300k a year. Other senior names land in the same neighborhood. I think it is fine for the senior leaders of that organization to make that salary; but then don’t pretend that making money is evil. Can they run the operation without money? No. Do the writers and editors want to work for free? No. Nobody does. If you refuse to charge for what you sell, you get the Massachusetts lesbian bar that collapsed under its own ideology and unpaid labor while the owner lives in her car.
A business making money is not a scandal but pretending money falls from trees and people will work for free and everything is just fine and money-less in the world — is so dumb I can’t find the words. It’s a child’s view of the world.
Their months-long investigation “reveals” that I want the company to succeed, I don’t think men are women and my politics are closer to middle-of-the-road liberal than the cartoon they need for me to be.
They accuse me of throwing red meat to “my right-wing base” (implying I’m not right wing and I’m just pandering) while also declaring that I am right-wing and that is my sin. Pick one. If I believe what I’m saying, it isn’t a grift. If I’m only performing for a base, then I’m actually a normie liberal and I’m not the devil. They need both stories at once because neither one is enough on its own.
This is the SPLC model applied to journalism: yellow headlines, a thin file, moral panic as product. Just wait until they find out I’m Jewish. That’ll really set them off!
They ask for donations in the same breath they sneer at commerce. They cannot run their so-called business without money any more than I can. The difference is I admit it.
I left the high-paying gig that promised even greater fortunes down the road. I am building something I believe in. Just like the left-leaning journalists who started Mother Jones in 1976. And just like Phil Knight and Bill Bowerman who started Nike in 1971 with a waffle trainer shoe. Not comparing myself to these guys — they built an icon.
Mother Jones can accuse me all day long of grift. It doesn’t bother me though I think it’s dumb for all the reasons I’ve cited here. They can keep the insult. I’ll keep the company and my integrity.
Strange that Mother Jones, once a venerable publication, spent all this time and effort on what we're told is a minor issue that doesn't affect anyone....
I just love ❤️ you Jennifer. If you ever need someone with my skills (which are odd: writer ghost writer teacher organizer formerly of unions now mostly anti union and definitely right leaning) please let me know. I’d so love to work with you. You exemplify the best of American women.