In the age of influencing, Black women fashion influencers are dominant forces in the $24 billion industry. It’s not easy to navigate public life, especially one that relies heavily on aesthetics. Black influencers are often disproportionately affected by biases, algorithms, and lower pay than their white counterparts. There’s also fascism, and the cancellation of diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives meant to stifle education and progress, in favor of conformity.
However, some influencers, even though they know how to put together a stunning fit, insist on showing up for their audiences as themselves, and intertwine their passion for advocacy with putting that thang on.
Enter Tenicka Boyd and Tashira Halyard. Don’t let their affinity for luxury fool you; they are always showing their followers how to practice advocacy in ways that educate and spark conversations, whether brands and agencies like it or not.
Tenicka Boyd, known online as Tenicka B, has a resume that lists National Organizing Director for the American Civil Liberties Union, Chief of Staff for the Color of Change, and an organizer for the Obama Administration. Her career path before content creation felt like a natural fit, shaped by her upbringing in Milwaukee, which she describes as “being surrounded by deeply academic, Pan-African people who really care about the world.” Boyd began posting online as a hobby before the rise of influencer marketing. She had a blog and would post there occasionally, but things took off when she began posting on TikTok during the COVID-19 pandemic.
“I saw my career and my life’s work as working in social justice. So, in 2020, when I started on TikTok, we were stuck at home during the pandemic,” she told EBONY. “I couldn’t go to art galleries, and I couldn’t really shop the way I wanted to in person in New York City. I started making content because I thought my millennial friends were only on Instagram and not on TikTok, so it was like, ‘Oh, I won’t be embarrassed.’”
Still, Boyd’s style quickly garnered attention, and she swiftly built a following. She started getting so popular that her social media presence began spilling over into work in ways that were both uncomfortable yet also opened her up to what her future career could look like. “The good thing is I worked for a civil liberties union organization, so online expression was encouraged, but it does get awkward when, at the end of the meeting, people are asking you for outfit inspiration,” Boyd said.
Boyd, who was fulfilled by her traditional 9-5, viewed social media as a hobby, but then the agencies started approaching her about full-time representation, and by 2021, she was creating content full-time and headed into what she describes as her “second act.”
Her feed is full of her beautiful travel adventures, solo, with her husband and daughter, and sometimes with brands. But if you stick around her YouTube page for a while, you’ll notice she has a knack for taking pop culture and getting to the nuances that make you think more critically. For example, her latest video dismantling the misogynistic idea that married women shouldn’t go on girls’ trips, or when she used her platform to encourage Delta Airlines to do the right thing after an incident with a racist passenger.
“I’m actually grateful that I became a creator in the post-Black Lives Matter movement, because I’m in a fundamentally different space than a lot of people my age, who have been creating content since they were 17,” Boyd said. “My job is to serve an audience, and they’re at different points in their journeys. But it’s always to meet this very specific aesthetic, and that aesthetic is really what I embody, which is a colorful life.”
Tough skin is essential for carving out a career in content creation. For Tashira Halyard, it helps that her energy is strong enough to let her make a joke about getting fired from her volunteer job on her day off. The story is that she was on the board of directors of a small, unnamed organization that aligned with her work as a lawyer in youth advocacy. Shortly after her wedding photos went live on Instagram, she was informed that she had been removed from the board of directors because her Instagram posts didn’t align with the organization’s mission, and they didn’t want to do anything that might jeopardize their funding. It was abrupt, and Halyard, who is queer, has a hunch that it’s a sign of the times.
“It was just something about the way that I show up that they felt I could threaten — and they specifically said this in the email — their funding,” Halyard told EBONY. “I mean, they could have taken issue with me anytime, but I can’t imagine a funding conversation being had if it was not for the current administration, and we know what has been happening around DE&I, LGBTQ, and other executive orders being rained down on us.”
Fascism provides another complicated layer for Black influencers, across the board, especially for influencers who incorporate social justice into their business model. For example, Halyard, shares tips and tricks about how to dress and buy quality pieces, shares her travel adventures, but she’s also going to do deep dives about how much harder Black luxury brands have to work to stay afloat, or the subliminal elitist messaging behind the quiet luxury trend at the risk of affecting her business, which in addition to influencer marketing, also includes diversity trainings for other business.
“They understand what it means to remain neutral in order to bring in those deals and those contracts. Twenty-twenty-five was a hard year for me on Instagram as far as brand partnerships were concerned, but it also was the year that we first entered into an authoritarian regime,” Halyard said. “The push to work with a diverse group of influencers or creators just stopped [and] I haven’t done anything around DE&I trainings in two years.”
Another component of Halyard’s business is the Movement For Black Lives Creator Academy, co-founded with her business partner, Chelsea Fuller. The goal is to help content creators bridge the gap between what they love and social issues, and create content around their chosen topics in cohesive ways that also educate.
“We work with creators who talk about everything from cooking to farming to gaming, and give them the kind of education they need so that they feel confident to infuse progressive values and their content,” Halyard said. “We happen to think, especially during this day and time, that it’s a lot better to hook people strategically when you’re doing your makeup and you’re talking about politics, or when you are cooking dinner, and we want to teach people content creation skills, and best practices, and how to marry that with political education.”