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--:-- Host: John Bickley: Jennifer Say was the chief brand officer at Levi's in line to potentially run the entire retail giant before she began to publicly question COVID lockdown policies in 2020. Now, Say is pushing back on big corporations and big governments' abandonment of American values, launching her own athletic clothing brand, and producing a documentary she hopes will make sure we never repeat the damaging mistakes made over the last few years. In this episode, we sit down with Say to talk about her new initiatives and the way Americans can take back the marketplace.
--:-- Host: John Bickley: I'm Daily Wire editor-in-chief John Bickley. It's Saturday, June 15th, and this is an extra edition of Morning Wire. Joining us to discuss the launch of her new athletic clothing brand, as well as her COVID documentary, is Jennifer Say, former chief brand officer at Levi's and now founder of XXXY Athletics.
--:-- Jennifer Say: Thank you for having me.
--:-- Host: John Bickley: So first, you were Levi's chief brand officer. And according to New York Times back in 2020, you were next in line to run the entire retail company. But suddenly you and Levi's parted ways. That was such a toxic time in our country 2020. Can you tell us what happened from your point of view?
--:-- Jennifer Say: In March of 2020, while I lived in San Francisco, I'd lived there for over 30 years. I was a kind of self-declared left of center Democrat, which you can laugh at me, but that's fine. My feelings aren't hurt. And I had already begun to kind of question some tenets of the platform around DEI and things like that, but was still pretty committed lefty. But in March 2020, March 13th, I remember the exact day, I was having no part of lockdowns and school closures in particular. It just felt wrong to me from the outset. The data did not support it from the outset.
--:-- Host: John Bickley: Everybody who says at this point, well, we didn't know. We did know from the very beginning. We knew that the median age of death was in the 80s. We knew that kids were at little to no risk.
--:-- Jennifer Say: And, you know, my argument would be that even if they were, we cannot shut schools down. We cannot shut small businesses down. We cannot shut churches and places of worship down. It's the most illiberal, undemocratic thing I can fathom. And I was outraged from the beginning, and I was very outspoken about it.
--:-- Host: John Bickley: As you might imagine, in San Francisco, that was an unacceptable position to hold. And, you know, I sort of started naively not really understanding and thinking, well, if I just ask these questions, people will start to kind of think about it and come around. That is not what happened, as you might imagine. And I was vilified and demonized and called every name you can imagine from a murderer to a racist and everything in between and eventually was basically chased out of my city.
--:-- Jennifer Say: I moved a year later to Colorado where my children could go to school. I was particularly inflamed by the fact that the private schools had opened in the fall of 2020. It just felt so hypocritical to me. And I didn't understand why people who claimed to care about the vulnerable did not care about the children.
--:-- Host: John Bickley: And, you know, eventually I made the decision to resign from my position at Levi's after a pretty storied career over 23 years. and continued to advocate for children and against lockdowns and for finding the truth of what actually happened.
--:-- Jennifer Say: I am making a film called Generation COVID, a documentary film about the harms to children from the long-term school closures. And I've just started my own brand.
--:-- Host: John Bickley: So that's a really long, sorry, probably longer than you expected, but yeah, it was a really difficult time I lost all my friends pretty much a couple remain fractured family relationships But to me it felt like it needed to be done And I can look myself in the mirror because I feel I asked the right questions and spoke truth Yeah.
--:-- Jennifer Say: And, you know, not to beat a dead horse, but I would like to read one of the tweets that appears to have sort of forced a wedge in between you and Levi's in 2020. Quote, currently there is not enough evidence for or against the use of masks, medical or other, for healthy individuals in the wider community, end quote.
--:-- Host: John Bickley: I don't know if there's a more anodyne tweet about masking, and that's completely accurate, as we've learned, and we knew back then, like you said. And I guess to put a finer point on it, did you find the corporate environment in general and where you were living just untenable after expressing these kind of beliefs publicly?
--:-- Jennifer Say: I think your comment that most of my tweets and commentary were incredibly anodyne, at least with hindsight, is accurate. I was very careful to be kind of calm and data-based in my questions and my statements. And they do seem quite, I mean, people read them now. I even read them now in writing my book and thought, how could this have made anyone mad? I don't even understand it. But that's where we were.
--:-- Host: John Bickley: And you have to kind of take yourself back to the frenzy, how crazed it was in this country. There were hardly any people who questioned lockdowns and school closures in March of 2020. I mean, the libertarians didn't even really question these illiberal policies. And, you know, ultimately, San Francisco is a city where I think 96 percent of the people are registered Democrats. It was completely untenable for me to remain in that city. It was impossible.
--:-- Jennifer Say: Let me let me tell you a story of what it was like in San Francisco. And you can kind of extrapolate to what that was like. in a corporate setting there. I went to the park with my family in June of 2020. I have four children. Two of my children are mixed race. Two are not. The police was called on us because you were not allowed to congregate outside in a park with members outside of your household.
--:-- Host: John Bickley: So the assumption was, one, because I have four children, which is a lot in San Francisco where people have like one maybe, but because my children look different from each other, that we could not have been of the same household.
--:-- Jennifer Say: And it's not just that the police came, it's that people called the police on us to investigate us and make us prove that we lived in the same household. That's what it was like living in San Francisco. Outrageous.
--:-- Host: John Bickley: And again, your documentary Generation COVID is going to highlight the damages done to children during this time, particularly from school closures, correct?
--:-- Jennifer Say: That is correct. School closures and all the other restrictions. I should note, in San Francisco, the playgrounds, outdoor playgrounds were closed for 10 months. 10 months. People do not have yards in San Francisco. I mean, I was an executive. I had a really, really nice apartment. I had no yard. Nobody has a yard in San Francisco. And so, children were locked inside their homes for 10 months, unable to play, unable to run.
--:-- Host: John Bickley: the isolation they suffered. Many were left home alone, especially kids from lower income backgrounds whose parents perhaps worked hourly wage jobs. These kids were untended. They had no one to help them to log on.
--:-- Jennifer Say: I mean, you know, it's not a secret at this point. The headlines are devastating. The learning loss, the mental health impacts, the chronic absenteeism, which is twice what it was before COVID. In some districts, chronic absenteeism is as high as 30 percent. These kids are not learning the basics. They're graduating from high school and they're unable to do basic math and don't have basic reading skills. These kids are not going to be able to go into the world and hold jobs. This is a generational catastrophe.
--:-- Host: John Bickley: Now you've left a corporate behemoth, one of the American originals, a massive company, to found your own athletics brand. Are you hoping to form a brand that more values aligned for more people
--:-- Jennifer Say: Yeah absolutely I mean I will say look I 55 years old I had no intention of starting my own business at this point I had every intention of starting to kind of think about when I might retire. That's not what's happening. And I will say, I, you know, I did a lot of interviewing in the year and a half, two years since I resigned from my job. And it was really disconcerting. And I was asked very direct questions about whether or not I regretted my actions and whether I was willing to apologize. And I said unequivocally, no, I was right. I was correct about everything. I have no regrets. I spoke truth. I spoke with integrity.
--:-- Host: John Bickley: And I just realized there was no way I was going to be able to enter a well-established brand, a well-established corporate environment with a really kind of domineering HR department and be myself. There was no way I was going to be able to do that. And I have always been myself and spoken in my own words, write my own speeches, write my own emails, which is very unusual for corporate executives. And I just wasn't going to do it.
--:-- Jennifer Say: And so I started to retrench and try to figure out what I was going to do. And one thing I should mention is I was an elite gymnast as a child. And so I have this elite athlete background. I certainly have the brand building and fashion executive experience. And I clearly have a penchant for saying true, but maybe unpopular, uncomfortable things. And I did it once before in gymnastics. I was actually the first gymnast to speak out about the abuses, the physical, emotional, and sexual abuse in the sport in 2008 in a book that I wrote called Chalked Up. That was, I would say that was my sort of first go at being canceled. It doesn't sound controversial now, but at the time it was.
--:-- Host: John Bickley: You weren't allowed to talk about coaches that were abusers. And so I felt like as I looked around and I looked at all the athletic brands that pretend to champion women, Nike first and foremost, they do no such thing. They treat women with actual astonishing disregard. And they certainly are not taking us down on what I see as an incredibly critical issue right now for women's sports, which is the protection of women's sports and spaces, that women's sports should be for actual women in order for it to be fair and protect the original intent of Title IX.
--:-- Jennifer Say: So I just sort of came to this idea that with a friend of mine who helped me come up with it, that this was the inevitable thing that I had to do next to start my own brand, which is called XXXY Athletics.
--:-- Host: John Bickley: Yeah, this idea of starting companies to compete with the big boys specifically because of value alignment issues is something Daily Wire is very familiar with and something we're very sympathetic toward. So XXXY Athletics, explain to us the mission of that, the vision of it. How do you see this appealing to a lot of people in America?
--:-- Jennifer Say: Well, we're the only brand to stand up for women's sports and spaces. We think we're the only brand that actually stands up for female athletes and respects the hard work, the time that they put in. We believe women athletes deserve a chance to compete on an even playing field. They deserve safety. They deserve privacy. And they deserve the chance to win. And they do not have that when males enter women's sports. They do not have a fair shot at winning and making the team.
--:-- Host: John Bickley: They do not have a fair shot at winning and making the team. And people say this is a fringe issue. There aren't that many males entering women's sports. Well, I can count close to 600 examples in just the last few years of male athletes who identify as female taking medals, team births, sponsorship dollars from deserving women. And it's not okay. And it violates the intention of Title IX, which was to protect women and girls' sex-based rights, which has now been rewritten.
--:-- Jennifer Say: We can talk about that. And I feel like, look, I was the beneficiary of Title IX. I believe my daughter deserves those same opportunities, and I won't give up without a fight. And I certainly won't give up because a bunch of men are telling me I need to sit down, be quiet and be nice.
--:-- Host: John Bickley: Yeah, about Title IX, the Biden administration is rewriting, you could say, the very heart of the entire women's protection law. Can you speak to how that plays into your mission?
--:-- Jennifer Say: Absolutely That has just strengthened my resolve Just a few weeks ago I think it a month at this point Biden Department of Education rewrote Title IX I would argue it was an illegal rewrite. They smuggled in changes which completely changed the meaning and stated intention of Title IX, which passed in 1972 and was meant to protect women's sex-based rights within the educational system.
--:-- Host: John Bickley: It has broad-reaching implications. The thing it's most known for is sports. And it has increased a thousandfold the number of girls and women that participate in high school sports, which, by the way, has just untold benefits. Better self-esteem, higher graduation rates, less likely to get pregnant in high school. I mean, the benefits to girls and young women go on and on and on from competing in sports.
--:-- Jennifer Say: Ironically, Nike laid all those out in there, if you let me play ad, back in 2011, but they don't seem to care about that So the rewrite of Title IX essentially replaces sex, meaning women or being female, with gender identity. So it conflates gender identity with sex-based rights, which means that if a male thinks that he is a female, he is afforded those same rights that were afforded to women as written initially in 1972 by Title IX.
--:-- Host: John Bickley: So that means he can compete on women's teams. He can enter locker rooms. He can join sororities. So women give up that equal playing field. They give up privacy, and I would argue safety, especially in contact sports.
--:-- Jennifer Say: And I should add, if the university or the school, the federally funded school, says no, that's not fair, you cannot. They risk losing their federal funding. They risk being accused of harassment, at which point there is no due process in terms of determining whether or not that was harassment. It's just some person that gets to decide, some nameless, faceless person. So it's problematic on many fronts, but essentially it completely erases the original intention of Title IX, which is to protect women's sex-based rights.
--:-- Host: John Bickley: Why do you believe your company and companies like it, these more traditional values-aligned companies, will ultimately succeed? And why is it important to launch them?
--:-- Jennifer Say: So here's what I'll say. To me, this should not be political. This is a matter of basic truth. And that's why we called the brand XXXY Athletics. That's the sort of basic truth of our chromosomes. There is XX and there is XY. And yes, there are some anomalies, but those are not different sexes. Those are genetic abnormalities. There are two sexes. That is it. That is the truth.
--:-- Host: John Bickley: Guess what? 70% of Americans agree with us. 70%. That includes a lot of Democrats. That says to me that this is an issue of truth. This should not be a partisan issue, but it has become a partisan issue because the left is so ideological that ideology trumps actual biology and truth.
--:-- Jennifer Say: And so our hope in starting this brand, which we want to be the very best, most premium product that can compete with all of her favorites, your favorites, Lulu and Nike and all of it needs to be amazing product. This is not a gimmick, but it can normalize saying this very true thing. I think brands can influence culture. I know you guys believe that in the Daily Wire. Brands can influence culture. If we make the very best product, the very best content that's really inspiring, our hope is that 70% that agrees with us will say it out loud at the soccer field on Saturday morning when they're watching their kids.
--:-- Host: John Bickley: And I will tell you, every time I wear the product and every time I wear the T-shirt, people ask me what it means, and they lean in and they whisper, I agree with you. So my hope is they will start to say that out loud because I think politics is downstream from culture. And if we can inform the culture and influence the culture and get all these folks to stand up and say this very true thing, then the politics will change.
--:-- Host: John Bickley: Well, Jennifer, thank you so much for coming on and great luck with your new company and your other endeavors, including the documentary. We'll definitely keep an eye out for that.
--:-- Jennifer Say: Yeah, awesome. I got a lot going on and I think your audience is pretty aligned and very interested. and I hope they'll check out the product.
--:-- Host: John Bickley: That was Jennifer Say and this has been an extra edition of Morning Wire.
