Month: February 2021

When Election Day came to a close this past November, the fate of the country was in limbo. Ballots across the nation were still being counted, and it’d be days until Joe Biden was announced as the next president of the United States. But for voters and activists, there was one obvious winner that Tuesday night—and that winner was drugs.

On Nov. 3, 2020, New Jersey, Arizona, and Montana all voted to legalize marijuana for recreational use. Mississippi voted to legalize medical marijuana, and South Dakota voted to legalize both. But it was in Oregon where voters made history, approving Measure 110 and becoming the first state to decriminalize possession of small amounts of all drugs, including cocaine, heroin, and methamphetamine. As of Feb. 1, possession in Oregon can no longer lead to jail time. Instead, individuals can choose between a $100 fine or a health assessment at an “addiction recovery center,” funded by redistributed tax revenue from legalized marijuana sales. The centers are intended to provide triage, treatment, and recovery services, and funds can also be used for peer support, housing for people with substance use disorders, and harm reduction services.

For the Drug Policy Alliance, it was a time to rejoice. The New York-based non-profit wrote the ballot measure, in partnership with Oregonians, which was ultimately supported by more than 120 local and national groups. The organization’s political arm, Drug Policy Action, financially backed the initiative and helped lead the campaign throughout the state. “For us, it’s like this dream happened,” Kassandra Frederique, Drug Policy Alliance’s executive director, told me. “But this is a moment in a longer vision.”

Following the historic vote, I Zoomed with Frederqiue and an entire squad of DPA’s leading women. Even on screen, their camaraderie was palpable. They graciously passed the mic to each other and made sure to call out one another’s contributions, inadvertently demonstrating how a group of women was able to take decades of activism and help channel them into this monumental win.

Policies like Measure 110, which decriminalize drugs and offer better access to treatment, have been a consistent dream for those in the movement, one that didn’t come true overnight. The team explained how DPA has been on the ground in Oregon for more than 20 years, building relationships with local partners, like Partnership for Safety and Justice, which advocates for public safety and criminal justice reform, and Outside In, one of the country’s first syringe exchanges. DPA also has a history of working on progressive policies in the state, like legalizing marijuana in 2014. (Oregon was also the first U.S. state to pass a death with dignity law in 1994.) Theshia Naidoo, managing director of legal affairs at DPA, said Oregon’s history of embracing such forward-thinking measures made activists feel the state might be ready to “take the leap” on this policy, too, even though it had never been tried before in the U.S.

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Oregon was also in a particularly dire position, with an ongoing addiction crisis and racial disparities in drug-related arrests. According to a report from the Oregon Criminal Justice Commission, and released by the Oregon Secretary of State’s office, if the ballot measure passed, racial disparities in drug-related arrests would drop by 95 percent and convictions would drop by 94 percent for Black and Native Oregonians. The state also ranked nearly last in access to treatment for substance use disorders. It all helped people realize that “we need a new way,” Naidoo said. “We can’t criminalize our way out of this problem.” Plus with the presidential election, 2020 was shaping up to be a banner year for voter turnout, which typically translates to more Democratic votes—an ideal time to introduce progressive policy.

However what organizers couldn’t have predicted back in 2019, when they were beginning to collect ballot signatures, was one of the seismic events that would come to define the start of the decade: the Black Lives Matter movement. This summer, as protests took place in cities nationwide, the conversation began to center around defunding the police, cutting police department budgets, and reallocating the money toward community-based solutions and services.

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“Everyone said, police are doing way too much,” Frederique said. “And what were the things they pointed out? Homelessness, mental health, substance use. And here we were, with our partners in Oregon, the same place where the federal government rained down [on protestors], and we had already put the infrastructure in place to remove police from a vital health issue.” But, she clarified, the timing wasn’t a fluke, rather the result of decades of organizing and research. “That luck is the residual of preparation and building that desire, giving people the ability and the space to want different and be able to reach for it.” Measure 110 was always about more than dismantling one system, according to the women of DPA. It was about ending the harm of criminalization, while also creating an alternate path for support.

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Now, the “what’s next” is pretty straightforward: to repeat this success in other places. Lindsay LaSalle, the managing director of policy at DPA, noted that since November, representatives from state legislatures around the country have reached out to DPA and expressed interest in introducing similar legislation, something she said was unimaginable even just a few years ago. “Theshia and I worked many, many years ago in Vermont just to get a bill that would allow a task force to study the impacts of decriminalization in the state,” she said. “Simply finding a sponsor for that bill to conduct research was incredibly difficult. Now we have legislators in Vermont clamoring to introduce a full-scale decriminalization effort.” Other states to look out for include California and Washington, where a bill has already been introduced in the state legislature.

It’s certainly a shift for people like Naidoo, who said she started in drug policy reform almost 15 years ago, back when it was considered a “fringe issue.” Since then, reform has proven to be a strategy that everyday people can and will support, thanks in part to DPA.

“The reality is you’re looking at powerful, innovative, expert women here,” said Ellen Flenniken, DPA’s managing director of development, before we end the Zoom. “This [success] was a result of DPA being an organization of ambitious risk-takers that are also deeply rooted in our community, our movement, and the people who have been most harmed by the war on drugs, with a clarity that we have to work to end it, no matter the cost.”

For Frederique, this point is crucial. “The narrative around who gets harmed by the drug war erases women all the time, at every level,” she said, adding that the perspective these women bring to the table is essential. “It makes sense why, if you look at our staffing, we’re set up the way that we are, right? We care that people have dignity in every interaction that they have. That’s what we’re fighting for.”

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Mary Wilson, the Supremes founding member who died last week at 76, may have been born in Greenville, Mississippi, but it was Detroit, where her family relocated when Wilson was three, that would propel her to icon status. The original girl group, which featured Wilson, Diana Ross, and Florence Ballard, formed in 1955 and would prove to be one of Motown Records’ biggest exports. With their boundary-breaking mix of style and talent, the trio helped pave the way for Black R&B musicians both at home and abroad.

In 2019, I caught up with Wilson while she was in residence at New York’s Carlyle Hotel, performing nightly shows at Café Carlyle. It was the eve of the publication of her book, Supreme Glamour, a passion project of Wilson’s: She worked for years to track down the group’s lost costumes and establish an archive, the Mary Wilson Collection. Glamorous as ever and every bit as engaging as you’d expect, Wilson discussed everything from the early days of her career to experiences with racism in the Deep South and run-ins with royalty.

I loved reading about the early days of The Supremes and how you sewed your own clothes using Butterick patterns. Did that knowledge of sewing help you appreciate the elaborate costumes that would come later, and ultimately lead you on your quest to preserve them?

No, I don’t think it was that, I think it was our own parents. There were so many misconceptions about Black people in America at the time, that we were somehow uncouth or unsophisticated, but that’s nonsense. Our parents and aunts and uncles dressed beautifully: the hats, the suits, they were sharp. Black people knew how to dress and we really got that from our community. I can remember being in church on Sunday as a little girl and admiring the parade of these big, beautiful hats. And of course, Diana and I had Home Economics in school, so that’s where we learned to sew.

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When the group started having costumes custom made, was it a collaborative process? Did you have any design input?

We didn’t but the beautiful part of that time frame was when we started doing TV. It was the height of variety shows like The Sonny & Cher Show, Ed Sullivan, and they had their own designers. We’d bought some nice gowns, I think off the rack at Saks, but when one of them showed us a sketch we were blown away. We were all wondering who was going to pay for all this intricate beading but it turned out to not be all that expensive, so we starting calling up the designers directly. Nowadays if you want a gown like that it’ll cost you $10,000-$20,000. We probably paid around $500 per gown.

You seem to be the self-appointed archivist of the group. What motivated you to try to preserve these garments?

Well, you put it nicely because my daughter says I’m a hoarder. But you can’t just toss musical history. So whenever a girl would leave, and Florence left first, she’d have to leave all the clothes for the next girl because the group was continuing on. Then Diana left so I got all of hers and so on until there I was, the keeper of the gowns.

But you didn’t quite have all of them. I heard one turned up in France recently?

It was the most incredible thing. We stored a lot of the gowns in Detroit at Motown when Motown closed and moved [and] some of the gowns went missing so now I have to buy them back. I’ve gotten calls from fans that have found them on eBay, and recently a woman in France found one at a yard sale. Now how did that get there? Others have turned up at museums as far away as Singapore.

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Your struggle to get ahold of the gowns wasn’t your only struggle with Motown. You talk in the book about difficulties with contract negotiations and what ultimately led to your activism.

I’ve been involved in so many lawsuits I should have married a lawyer; it would’ve saved me a lot of money. The first was me trying to get the rights to the Supremes name because until Florence left, we all thought it belonged to us. Of course, the small print states that Motown owns the name. But all these groups were popping up and using the name, and not just our name. The Drifters, the Coasters, and several others. It’s basically identity theft, so we lobbied on Capitol Hill to get the Truth in Music legislation passed in 32 states. The next one, which I’m really proud of, is the Music Modernization Act. This particular bill protects people who recorded music before 1972 because if that music has since been streamed, you’ve not gotten paid. This will change that. President Trump actually signed it the day that Kanye West was at the White House, which is probably why the news got buried.

Technology has certainly changed the business. What are your thoughts on social media?

Look, I’ve got enough going on that I could have a reality show, but that’s not me. There’s a photo in the book though, taken around 1956. We’d just landed in England and we’ve got our little Beatles suits on and are being swarmed by photographers before the word “paparazzi” was part of everyday language. We had a lot of firsts and sometimes I hate to brag, but people don’t realize that back then a lot of these things were nascent and we were some of the ones that got it started.

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Did you ever keep a journal?

I kept a diary from the time I was 17 years old and in the 11^th grade, my teacher Mr. Boone said, “Ms. Wilson, I know you’re singing in this little group called the Primettes [a precursor to the Supremes], but if you don’t pass my class, you won’t graduate and you won’t be able to go out and sing with that group.” That scared me. Berry Gordy also said we had to finish school, but the truth is our parents would have killed us if we hadn’t. So I wrote a term paper for Mr. Boone about my first 17 years, which were quite interesting. I wasn’t raised by my mother but by family members who I thought were my mom and my dad, and then they told me the truth when I was about 10. It totally freaked me out and so I wrote about that. Mr. Boone was this very proper sort of Black guy and he said, “Ms. Wilson, this is fabulous! You should definitely think about becoming a writer.” All I could think about was going down to Motown and recording.

I’d go down there every day and would meet people like Marvin Gaye, Sam Cooke, Stevie Wonder, so I started keeping a little journal up until about 10 years ago, when I was just too busy. I never really went back and read them but because I had put pen to paper, I had the recall, down to the color of the walls. And I tell everyone to do the same because you can pass it down to your child. I wish I’d had that kind of insight into my own mother as a young woman, but I’ll never know.

At several points in the book, you recount stories that made you feel as though your career path was almost preordained, like your etiquette coach at Motown who said that one day you’d be singing for kings and queens.

Mrs. Powell said some of the most wonderful things to us, such as “you are diamonds in the rough and we are just here to polish you.” The impact of saying that to a young person is just immeasurable. She was such an elegant woman and I always felt good when we were able to honor her. Motown artists always stood out, wherever we went.

So, when we were in London, her prediction came true, and after the show we met Princess Margaret, who had the nerve to ask if our hairdos were wigs. It wasn’t the question but how openly she asked it. I couldn’t believe how uncouth she was and thought how much she reminded me of some of the people I’d grown up with in the projects in Detroit. I learned a lot from that that helped me throughout my life, and that’s that a title doesn’t make anyone better than you. And then we became friends.

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As the longest-running member of the Supremes, what kept you going?

Well, I think I’m one of the fortunate ones, and I think Diana would say this too, because we started very young and we all had the same ideas about music and style and were just really in sync. I’ve always said that when I met Florence and Diana, I felt that I’d met the other parts of myself. I totally enjoyed singing and never wanted to do anything else after that. I had never thought of singing as a career; I just thought everybody woke up singing. I enjoy being up on that stage and making people smile. I’ve found what I love to do and I don’t want to do anything else, though this has led me to do other things.

Motown is synonymous with Detroit but you were actually born in Greenville, Mississippi. What was that like?

I was born in 1944 in Greenville, Mississippi. My parents had a home there, right off the levee, and we left when I was about three in that Great Migration from the South because of jobs. Many people left for Detroit as well as cities like St. Louis and Chicago. Every summer we’d either drive or take the long train ride back to Mississippi to visit family, so of course, I was aware of the racism there. Around the time I graduated from school, in 1961, my dad died and we went back for the funeral. I was downtown shopping for gloves for him to wear, as you did in those days, and one of my cousins said to me, “now Mary, you be good, okay? You don’t know these people around here.” Meanwhile, I’m from the north and I’m turning my nose up at some of the things in this shop, saying things like, “I don’t know about those socks; they look cheap.” So my cousins are whispering, “Mary, please be quiet, they’re watching” and I’m like, “Who’s watching? So what? I’m trying to get the best for my father.” So when I got up to the counter the old man says, “Yeah, I can see she’s not from around here.” And my cousin said to me, “Mary, I’ve still gotta live here, so you’d better leave that ‘up north’ stuff up north.” I definitely gained an understanding of the “southern way” though I experienced nothing like that in Detroit. It was quite eye-opening.

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My mother is from Selma, Alabama and mentioned that all through high school, her older brother had photos of The Supremes plastered on his bedroom walls. I found this such an interesting image given everything that was going on there at the time.

Because the music really did transcend any racial situations. Even the radio stations of the time found a way to segregate the music, but people still found a way to listen. Bill Wyman of the Rolling Stones would talk about how sailors would come here and buy the records and carry them back to England to be played on pirate radio because the BBC would only allow certain traditional music on land. So the Beatles, the Stones, the Dave Clark Five, they were totally into the music before radio was. It was a great export for America

The Mississippi Delta has such a rich musical history. Was that at all an influence on you?

Absolutely, because of our parents, that’s all they listened to. My father had a huge collection of blues albums but at the time it wasn’t really my thing. I was speaking to Bill Wyman about how the Stones probably knew more of the blues than we did because my generation wasn’t as interested—because it was our parents’ music. But I do think it penetrated my soul and I think the same thing is happening now with music from the 1960s: Young people absorbed it in their parents’ homes and now they’re singing it.

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Supreme Glamour

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Many people aren’t aware of what a fashion plate Whoopi Goldberg is. Is this why she was chosen to write the forward?

It actually had nothing to do with fashion but more about Whoopi as a person, and of course it didn’t hurt that she admitted to having wanted to be a Supreme as a kid! At the time, there were not a lot of Black people on television. Hattie McDaniel may have won an Oscar but only one side of the Black experience was being portrayed. Whoopi said when she first saw us on television it was like “wow, here are three glamorous, Black females.” There were well-known Black film actresses, but television changed the scope of what people allowed in their homes. So when I heard Whoopi recount that story I knew she was the first person I had to call because we felt how impactful it was, too. And there were three of us. And I know that it didn’t only inspire Black women. We broke a glass ceiling for all women. The saying for so long has been that “behind every great man, there’s a great woman.” And that’s true. But now she can just as easily be alongside him or even in front.

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It only took a handful of outings and some social media flirting for rumors about Kendall Jenner and Phoenix Suns NBA player Devin Booker, 23, to start. The pair made headlines on Tuesday, August 11 when Booker commented on one of Jenner’s posts. She shared a close-up video of herself posing for the camera, captioned with a single strawberry emoji. Booker simply commented, “I like strawberries,” to which Jenner responded right back with four strawberry emojis.

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While we try to decipher what it all means for their relationship, here’s what you need to know about Booker, including his athletic career and previous connection to Jordyn Woods.

He’s a shooting guard for the Phoenix Suns.

Born in Grand Rapids, Michigan, Booker is the son of Melvin, who was named the 1994 Big Eight Conference Player of the Year during his time at the University of Missouri. In a father-son profile for The Undefeated, Melvin said that NBA “draft night was one of the worst nights ever” after he wasn’t selected for a team. But Melvin instilled a love of the sport in Devin, who was drafted 13th in the first round for the Phoenix Suns. After playing at the University of Kentucky, Booker has averaged 26.6 points per game in his fourth season as a player. He has more time to spend in Los Angeles now, as his team was eliminated from the playoffs last week in a tiebreaker game with the Memphis Grizzlies.

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He was set to participate in the 2020 Olympics before they were cancelled.

Another career highlight for Booker has been postponed indefinitely. It was reported in February that he was a finalist to join the roster of Team USA’s basketball lineup for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics. Previously, Booker had participated in USA basketball training camps without making the final roster. Originally scheduled to take place from July 24 through August 9, 2020 in Tokyo, the Olympics have been more or less cancelled due to the coronavirus pandemic. At the latest, they will be held in summer 2021.

He and Kendall have been spotted together before and even went on a vacation in April—controversially because of California’s non-essential travel ban due to COVID-19.

Prior to their latest ‘gram exchange, Booker and Jenner have had a few public outings. In April, the pair was photographed on a road trip from Los Angeles to Arizona, and the following month, they were seen driving near Van Nuys Airport in L.A. Around that time, an insider told People that the two were strictly platonic—for now. “She and Devin have a lot of mutual friends,” the source said. “They’re just friends for now but you never know with Kendall.” Meanwhile, an Us Weekly source said in June, “They’re hooking up, but they’re not serious She’s talking to a couple different guys. She has so many men after her it’s crazy.” In August, the pair dined without masks at Nobu alongside sister Kylie Jenner, according to People.

While rumors swirled about Booker and Jenner, the model received criticism about her pattern of dating NBA players. Someone tweeted a TikTok video of three men tossing a toddler around in a circle, writing, “NBA players passing around Kendall Jenner.” She clapped back, writing in return, “they act like i’m not in full control of where i throw this cooch.”

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Jenner was most recently linked to Philadelphia 76ers guard Ben Simmons, although it was reported in February that the pair was “not officially back together.” Prior to that relationship, Jenner dated Detroit Pistons player Blake Griffin in 2017.

He loves to travel.

While the status of their relationship is unclear, Booker and Jenner do have one thing in common: their love of traveling, even during the coronavirus pandemic. Jenner has been known to flout mask or social distancing guidelines for multiple Nobu outings or a trip to Utah with her pal Fai Khadra. Booker has also been documenting his travels on Instagram, taking a trip to Colorado in July and spending time in California in June. A few years ago, he even documented a trip to Greece. (Jenner follows Booker and has been consistently liking his photos.)

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He describes himself as an “old soul.”

While Booker is young, famous, and linked to a high-profile partner, he still considers himself an “old soul” at heart. During a February 2020 GQ interview, he confessed to preferring wired headphones over AirPods, which he’s apparently “lost over five pairs of.” Booker also totes around a camcorder during the season to capture moments with his teammates, something he says reflects his old-fashioned sensibility. “People always say I have an old soul. That’s just the way I was raised, taking after my father and my brother,” he told the outlet. “I’m always listening to older music, ’90s R&B. I’m a little vintage mixed with a little modern and fast-paced.”

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He and Drake have a serious bromance.

Booker may be staying mum about speculation he’s dating Jenner, but his love for Drake is well-known. During a 2016 concert in Phoenix, Drake sported Booker’s jersey. Booker also saluted Drake, doing the “Hotline Bling” dance moves after winning a game. “Drake’s my guy. We were just in Toronto recently. He looked out for me. Drake’s a good guy. He’s like a big brother to me,” Booker has said about the rapper, according to NBA.com.

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But perhaps the coolest perk to come from Drake and Booker’s friendship is Booker being name-checked in a song. During Drake’s feature on the 2018 Travis Scott song “Sicko Mode,” he raps, “See the shots that I took, wet like I’m Book,” which references Booker. When asked by GQ how he feels about the shoutout, he said: “If I’m in the shower, or at the house chilling, I can go crazy to it. But If I’m out, it kinda takes away from how much I’d otherwise get to enjoy the whole ‘Sicko Mode’ song. You can feel the buildup, and people start looking at me when the time is coming. I’ve heard it from sooooo many people. But definitely another mark in my career I didn’t see coming.” Booker also made a cameo in Drake’s “Chicago Freestyle” music video earlier this year.

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He’s previously been romantically linked to Jordyn Woods.

Prior to sending strawberry emojis and taking road trips with Jenner, Booker is rumored to have dated another member of her circle. In 2018, Booker was linked to Kylie Jenner’s former BFF Jordyn Woods. Us Weekly even reported that the couple joined Kendall Jenner and then-boyfriend Simmons for a double date. After Booker and Jenner were first spotted together in late April, Woods tweeted “haha good morning” alongside three trash can emojis, perhaps throwing shade at the couple. She has since deleted the tweet, according to Us. Woods has also reportedly dated Jenner’s close pal Fai Khadra, making this social circle very close.

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The Democratic congresswomen of the House Oversight Committee are putting pressure on the Food and Drug Administration to lift the in-person dispensing requirement for mifepristone—a prescription medication that’s used to safely end early pregnancies in the United States. During the coronavirus pandemic, safe access to medication abortion is more important than ever, but being required to obtain the medication in person places a burden on individuals. Below, Committee Chairwoman Carolyn Maloney and Committee Member Ayanna Pressley explain how onerous these restrictions really are and urge the FDA to lift them immediately.

For more than two decades, people in the United States have taken mifepristone to safely end their pregnancies. But despite a thoroughly documented history of safe use, this medication remains subject to burdensome, medically unnecessary restrictions—including the requirement that it be dispensed in person. For too long, this has created barriers for people seeking access to medication abortion care.

During the coronavirus pandemic, which has disproportionately impacted Black and brown communities across the United States, these restrictions have put people seeking reproductive health care and medical providers in harm’s way. Under these restrictions, someone seeking an abortion would be forced to go into a doctor’s office, risking coronavirus exposure. They would also need to potentially take off work, seek childcare, and travel to attend their appointment. These restrictions take economic privilege to overcome and further entrench long standing health inequities.

Early in the coronavirus pandemic, the FDA decided to ease in-person dispensing requirements for several medications because of the risk they posed for patients. However, one glaring omission was mifepristone. Of the more than 20,000 drugs the FDA regulates, mifepristone is the only drug the FDA requires patients to obtain in person at a hospital, clinic, or medical office, but does not restrict the ability of patients to self-administer—unsupervised—at home or at a location of their choosing.

According to the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, the leading nonpartisan organization of OB-GYNs in the United States, in-person dispensing requirements for mifepristone “have no medical basis, provide no patient benefit, and unnecessarily restrict access to care.”

Since it was approved in 2000, more than four million people in the United States have used mifepristone. Data shows that fewer than one-tenth of one percent of patients who take mifepristone experience major adverse medical events. Because there is no medical reason to require patients to obtain mifepristone in person, and because drugs with greater risks are exempt from similar requirements, mifepristone’s in-person dispensing requirement is a thinly veiled attempt to stigmatize safe, simple abortion care.

In Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v. Casey, the Supreme Court held that the government may restrict abortion access so long as doing so does not place an “undue burden” on the pregnant person. The concept of “undue burden” has left it unclear how many restrictions are too many, and this ruling has allowed those who oppose abortion to weaponize restrictions with the goal of taking us back to pre-Roe times.

As a result, abortion access has been steadily whittled down by anti-choice politicians for decades. And while abortion remains a legal right under the Constitution, it has become a nearly impossible right for some people—mostly poor, marginalized individuals—to exercise.

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Last summer, following a lawsuit led by ACOG, a federal court in Maryland ordered FDA to suspend the in-person dispensing requirement for mifepristone during the coronavirus pandemic, as it had for other drugs. But the Trump administration asked the Supreme Court to intervene, and last month the Supreme Court granted the administration’s request to reinstate the in-person dispensing requirement for mifepristone.

In a dissenting opinion to this decision, Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan pointed out that maintaining the FDA’s in-person requirements for mifepristone during the coronavirus pandemic “imposes an unnecessary, irrational, and unjustifiable undue burden on women seeking to exercise their right to choose.” The two wrote: “The FDA’s in-person requirements for mifepristone have now been suspended for six months, yet the Government has not identified a single harm experienced by women who have obtained mifepristone by mail or delivery.”

In short: There are no medical reasons for the mifepristone restrictions, only ideological ones. And in light of the danger this requirement poses to people seeking medication abortion care at the height of the coronavirus pandemic, the FDA must immediately lift the unnecessary in-person dispensing requirement. Abortion is health care and should not be further siloed and stigmatized in our policy. We are committed to working with our colleagues to continue to fight to protect and expand access to safe, legal abortion care now and through the future.

Congresswoman Carolyn B. Maloney represents New York’s 12th congressional district in the House of Representatives and chairs the Committee on Oversight and Reform. Congresswoman Ayanna Pressley represents Massachusetts’s 7th congressional district in the House of Representatives, sits on the Committee on Oversight and Reform, and is a Task Force Chair of the Pro-Choice Caucus.

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Nine-year-old Blue Ivy Carter is nominated for a Grammy, better at dancing and doing makeup than many adults, and is back to modeling, too. While Blue is no stranger to making appearances in her mom Beyoncé’s Ivy Park campaigns, her latest appearance in an Icy Park video had Twitter reeling. “Blue Ivy” trended on the platform, with commenters rightfully pointing out that as great as Bey is, Blue is the real standout star of the campaign.

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“Wow, can’t believe Blue allowed the lady on the left to take part in her campaign,” one Twitter user quipped, with several others poking fun at Beyoncé and her daughter’s star power.

“Blue’s charity work is unmatched,” another joked.

A third wrote, “when icy parks sells out in 30 seconds I’m giving blue ivy all the credit idc.”

Others recognized the force Blue has already become before even reaching age 10:

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Blue’s grandmother Tina Lawson also applauded Blue’s modeling and revealed behind-the-scene details about Blue’s appearance on her Instagram. Blue apparently wasn’t even supposed to be in the shoot, but she knew she was meant to shine in it.

As Lawson put it, “My Beautiful grandbaby Blue Ivy looking like a little super model in her Ivy Park . Swing your hair Blue ,!!!!! She inserted herself into this shoot . No she was not supposed to be in it ! She was just hanging out and got dressed and I guess she said “I ‘m not gonna tell you what I could do I’m gonna show you”I love that aggressive spirit My Blue Blue!!!! ❤️”

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