Soledad O’Brien’s #GirlsCan Video Series for CoverGirl Shares Diverse Powerful Voices

18-year-old rapper and singer Becky G, who is also a CoverGirl spokesmodel. (Photo: CoverGirl)

Rochelle Ballantyne is on a full scholarship at Stanford University and is a few points short of becoming the first African American female chess master. Becky G is a pint-sized Mexican American singer and rapper whose first single, “Shower,” peaked at 16 on the Billboard 100. Geena Rocero is a transgender high-fashion model and activist, original from a working class family in the Philippines, who founded Gender Proud to help transgender people around the world self-identify with fewer barriers. Tina Garnanez is a Navajo Native American who suffered PTSD after serving for years in the military, where women make up only 15% of the population. These four accomplished, beyond-all-odds women of color are profiled in journalist and documentarian Soledad O’Brien’s web series for CoverGirl’s #GirlsCan program. The girls’ empowerment movement has pledged $5 million over the next five years to fund nonprofit organizations and individuals who are helping women break barriers. Through the web series, O’Brien, a former CNN anchor, is aiming to tell stories of women beyond the glossy magazine pages and red carpets. “I think that it’s really important that the media jumps and tells the different iterations of stories,” O’Brien tells Yahoo Beauty. “We’d like to believe that one person is a stand-in for every group, and if we just get to 10 people, it’d be good enough.”

Soledad O’Brien interviewing Becky G and her mother. (Photo: CoverGirl)

Rocero, whose mother was the breadwinner in the family in Manila, earning money by selling Kikkoman soy sauce to Japanese restaurants, is no stranger to the diversity of women’s experiences. Growing up in the Philippines, people would shout derogatory phrases at her in the streets. She knew at a very early age that she was a girl and how to self-identify — she’d wear a T-shirt on her head to symbolize long hair. “Mom, this is my hair. I’m a girl,” she told her mother. Luckily, Rocero’s parents were both supportive, and she found her confidence by entering the trans beauty pageants in the country, which ended up helping with her future modeling career.

When she immigrated to the United States at age 17, she was able to register legally as a female in San Francisco. Back in the Philippines, however, she is legally considered a man. “There is social visibility but no legal rights where I come from,” she tells Yahoo Beauty. “And it’s the opposite in the United States — here, I have rights, but I’m not visible as a transwoman unless I speak out.” Like many other Amazonian models, Rocero was discovered at a restaurant in New York City and signed with top agency Next Models — she worked for over 10 years without telling anyone that she was trans, and didn’t come out until 2014 in a public TED talk. At the time she said, “the world makes you something that you’re not, but you know inside what you are, and that question burns in your heart: How will you become that?”

Soledad O’Brien and Geena Rocero. (Photo: Instagram)

Rocero is conscious that women have extremely different stories and experiences — I Am Cait, for example, is not the story of most transpeople. In fact, one-third of trans teens are homeless, and 44 percent have been assaulted. “We should understand those layers — what led you to be the person that you are right now? Whether it’s the intersections of your social economic background, your privilege – tell that story,” she says. “Once you understand intersectionality within your story, there’s a lot of stories to cover. All layers of our identity affect our stories.”

O’Brien admits that the women she profiled are supernaturally exceptional in both life and career, and many of them came from her own personal network due to her experience as a reporter covering underrepresented individuals and groups. She met Rocero, for example, through mutual friends. “I wasn’t trying to set a quota for diversity,” she tells Yahoo Beauty. “But I do think it’s an issue we need to be concerned about. If we stay in our own bubbles and circles when we talk about feminism and women’s empowerment, we risk leaving crucial voices out.” In O’Brien’s own industry of broadcast journalism, women make up only 35 percent of reporters and minority women make up an even smaller percentage, O’Brien, who is of Afro-Cuban and Irish descent, has broken many barriers. “People come up to me and say, ‘Oh my god — there are Afro-Latinas?! I’m like, ‘Yes, and there have been for a long time!’” she says. “Latinas in general are not a monolithic group and there are black people that go across the range of what they believe politically and socially.” Her book, Latino in America, tells the many stories and breadth of experiences of Latino individuals, male and female, old and young, rich and poor, across the United States. They don’t necessarily share common experiences — and that’s O’Brien’s point: even with their differences, their stories are worth telling.

Working with CoverGirl, of course, there’s an element of appearance involved — which may seem like extra pressure on girls and women who are busy trying to break barriers. “I’m a girl, and I’m African American, which means I have to work twice as hard as anyone else,” chess champion Ballantyne explains in the #GirlsCan video. (There are 843 chess masters in the United States, and only 50 of them are female. Zero are black.) But O’Brien and Rocero both agree that taking care of yourself and making sure that you feel as confident as possible are crucial to breaking these barriers. “I think self-confidence comes from feeling like you’re firing on all cylinders,” O’Brien says. “Confidence comes from feeling you’re able to hit the level that you believe you can attain.” Rocero does yoga regularly to center herself in the midst of busy travel schedules. “When I don’t do yoga, it shows on my face — I start to break out,” she says. But O’Brien, who once raised four young kids at the same time, admits that there’s an unrealistic pressure to take on the world and look gorgeous doing it. “It’s OK if you’re not balanced,” she says. “When I launched my company 18 months ago and when I first had kids, I didn’t have time to go to the gym. It’s OK to give yourself a break, and to see your life in ups and downs. Some days are better than others, and it’s important to not let the bad days keep you down.”

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