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Forbes
15-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Forbes
A'ja Wilson And Nike Celebrate Black Girlhood In Game-Changing Sneaker Debut
'A'ja Wilson's on top, top, top! Can't take her spot, spot, spot!' Two Black girls playing a hand game, beads and barrettes bopping as they remix the playground classic, 'Miss Mary Mack,' is not the opening scene most would expect to see in a commercial promoting the long-awaited shoe for one of the biggest names in basketball. And yet, that's exactly how 'One of a A'Kind,' the ad for A'ja Wilson's new signature kicks, begins. Nike announced Wilson's debut footwear and apparel collection in February. Fans got a chance to see the products and hear about the Las Vegas Aces star's inspiration for the A'One when she sat down for an interview with Issa Rae, a Hollywood mogul known for writing, producing, and starring in the HBO hit Insecure. In the 24-minute video Wilson talks about her childhood, the village that raised her, and how she honored them in the collection's design. Wilson's intentionality in crafting her footwear to express her style and personality—there's a line from her New York Times bestselling book, Dear Black Girls, imprinted on the outsole of her new shoe—signals that the three-time WNBA MVP sees herself as more than a professional athlete. She's also a proud Black girl, and her new commercial invites viewers to see her for who she is off the court. In a world where people happily pay for commercial-free viewing experiences, 'One of A'Kind' has captivated audiences, especially Black women. Eleven days after its release the ad has been viewed more than 112,000 times. It was directed by Jenn Nkiru, a Nigerian-British artist who also directed Beyoncé's music video for 'Brown Skin Girl.' 'I'm drawn to the familiarity of it,' Ashleigh Greene Wade said of the commercial via e-mail. 'Little girls see themselves and also see A'ja as a role model.' Wade is a professor of digital studies at the University of Virginia who researches Black girlhood. In her book, Black Girl Autopoetics: Agency and Possibility in Everyday Digital Practice, she writes about the creative ways that Black girls use social media and other platforms to represent themselves on their own terms. She sees Wilson's ad as a rare gem, centering a group still marginalized in popular culture. 'This depiction is so refreshing,' she said. 'It allows us to see Black girls playing, dancing, having fun, and through celebrating A'ja, celebrating being Black girls.' The commercial presents scenes, inspired by A'ja's childhood, that resonate with many Black girls and women. A school bus abuzz with the laughter of a girls' sports team, a group of friends jumping rope, and an all-girls dance team wearing pink uniforms emblazoned with Wilson's number, 22. Then there's the church scene where two girls stifle their giggles as a woman sitting in a nearby pew admonishes them to quiet themselves during the service. Adorned in a Kentucky Derby-worthy purple hat and sparkling white suit—the uniform of the elderly women known affectionately as church mothers—it is clear that she means business. Taken together, the commercial paints a portrait virtually non-existent in the media landscape, including advertising. 'This portrayal offers a beautiful counter to the trope of the adultified Black girl—the Black girl who has to take care of her younger siblings, the Black girl who has to be strong in the face of trauma, the Black girl who people criminalize and oversexualize,' Wade said. 'And that's not to say those Black girls' stories should not be told, but it's important to see examples of Black girls just being carefree.' In this way, the ad emulates the exuberance that Wilson brings to the court, even as she dominates. 'Basketball is in fact a game,' A'ja told Rae in their interview about her collection. 'It's supposed to be fun.' Fans can witness Wilson in all of her Black girl joy—and her new shoes—this summer as she attempts to bring home a third championship ring. The 2025 WNBA season tips off May 16.
Yahoo
09-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
New Nike ad is a love letter to Black girls from A'ja Wilson and Malia Obama
Black girls' musical play — embodied percussion passed down through generations — is rarely seen as sport. But it is. The 1980 Fantastic Four Double Dutch Champs, who joined the first international rap tour in '82, are proof. But because these games are songs — and center girls — they're rarely taken seriously. A new Nike ad campaign starring A'ja Wilson and directed by Malia Obama makes us take them seriously. In her pink A'One signature shoe, Wilson and Black girls take center court. One of the two commercials shows Wilson, a two-time WNBA champion and three-time league MVP with the Las Vegas Aces, sitting on the steps of a front porch with a girl of about 10 who's teaching a handclapping game-song to the tune of 'Miss Mary Mack' — correcting the 28-year-old athletic genius when she messes up: ♪ A'ja Wilson's on top, top, top / Can't take her spot, spot, spot / She's a real one through, through, through / Always does what she'll do, do, do. ♪ Another ad, featuring the same rhymed chants, is a montage of HBCU cheer formations, sashays, stomps and hair politics, too. It opens with jump cuts of beads and braids that spell out A'ja's name as two young Black girls clap and sing. It's a cinematic mashup that nods to Beyoncé's 'Formation' music video. It's intercut with scenes from 'Black Girls Play: A Story of Hand Games,' the Oscar-shortlisted doc selected for the 2025 American Film Showcase. The NAACP Image Award-winning film was produced by Marsha Cooke, vice president of ESPN Films and '30 for 30,' and directed by the innovative, Oscar-winning Rada Studio team out of Brooklyn. I'm a global envoy for that documentary as an esteemed scholar of Black girlhood studies. Under Obama's direction, Black feminist layering is everywhere: sound and visual interplay ping-ponging between body percussion and cinematic bombast. The sound of a basketball hitting hardwood is sampled and pitched down under 'through, through, through' — pulling us deeper into A'ja's signature flow: hooping, passing, jooking and dunking. All this fun and 'fan'-fare rides the familiar melody of 'Mary Mack.' The ads, rich with deliberate joy and reverence for Black girls' play, center a Black woman who knows what it means to be excluded — and what it takes for a Black girl to rise above it. In her 2024 book, 'Dear Black Girls,' Wilson recounts being in fourth grade at a predominantly white school in the Confederate flag-waving town of Hopkins, South Carolina, thrilled about attending a bestie's birthday celebration. 'You know it's a slumber party, right?!? You might have to sleep outside," the friend said. 'My dad doesn't really like Black people.' Wilson wrote, 'It felt like I aged 10 years in one moment.' The first time Black girls are made to see they're 'different' often marks the beginning of a lifelong denial of loving their bodies. Maya Angelou, in 'I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings,' wrote, 'If growing up is painful for the Southern Black girl, being aware of her displacement is the rust on the razor that threatens the throat. It is an unnecessary insult.' But Wilson's mom helped fourth-grade A'ja avoid letting other people reduce her to her skin color or size. ♪ She won M-V-P, P, P / 1, 2 and 3, 3, 3 / Her game is tea, tea, tea / She made history, -ry, -ry. ♪ In my book 'The Games Black Girls Play: Learning the Ropes from Double Dutch to Hip-Hop,' I show how girls' oral communication and embodied lessons in musical blackness operate like algorithms. Those patterns seed creative fluency, which is also necessary in elite play. Obama's ads brilliantly use contrafactum — putting new words to an old tune, in this case 'Miss Mary Mack.' This compositional method primes listeners to sing the rhyme about A'ja Wilson like a victory lap, celebrating her top-tier basketball prowess. We say her name, see her image and name-check the likeness in the campaign while imagining ourselves in her shoes. In the book that's her personal love letter to Black girls, Wilson writes, 'No matter how well you think you know the game, there will always be those little moments when you're reminded about the way people see Black women in our society. And I can't lie to you. It will take your breath away every time.' ♪ They said she wasn't enough, 'nuff, 'nuff / So she did it for us, us, us / And if you talk smack, smack, smack/ She's gonna clap back, back, back. ♪ Wilson is a two-time Olympic gold medalist and the first WNBA player to score 1,000 points in a season. Her six-year Nike extension deal, including her A'One signature shoe, is among the most lucrative in women's basketball. Wilson's biography reminds us that excellence won't shield Black girls from the pain of being excluded. Her story and Obama's narrative direction reveal how much the world still needs to make room for Black girls' joy and brilliance, and power. College athletes couldn't profit from their names, images and likenesses when Wilson starred for the South Carolina Gamecocks. As the WNBA's No. 1 pick in 2018, Wilson earned a rookie salary of around $52,000 — less than I earned that year as a professor with a Ph.D. And don't forget that Black Women's Equal Pay Day falls on July 27 — marking how far into the year Black women in all occupations must work to earn what white men earned the year before. Last year, the rookie salary for the NBA's No. 1 pick was $12.6 million. Little things like a shoe can open doors for other girls and women. Don't let anyone tell you that you can't make a life or a career out of something once thought small and insignificant, like a girls' handclapping game song. Play is a fundamental human activity and a right for children — and adults. Malia envisioned it. A'ja lives it. This article was originally published on
