I occupy two spaces on the internet.
One is Therapist Land, the trauma-informed, (sometimes) neurodivergent-affirming, insight-riddled internet space where it’s safe to soften, reflect and practice a little self-compassion. As an ACEs ace who chose to exclusively support mental health practitioners when I started this business and has been doing so for the past four years, I deeply appreciate the space, the content, and most of all, the folks creating it.
The other is Girlie-pop Marketing Land. Which is sometimes fun and fresh, liberating and championing creativity. But often, it’s just gross Bro-marketing dressed up in hot-pink text and a blazer. One-size-fits-all marketing and sales solutions shoved down our throats promising 7-figures, secret sauces, and formulas for the right way to make big impact and bigger income.
I occupy a third space, too: Quiet consumption of trends, unhinged shit posting, memes, and comment sections—AKA internet culture, and it doesn’t enter the chat for this one. But I need you to know I’m a gorl who gets it.
Between the TikTok ban and inauguration (this blog post was drafted in January, my creative process is consistently inefficient 🤷♀️)… Among other things, what’s up with Edits? The announcement timing was *tea*. The tech billionaires are serving up big Bravo x Black Mirror energy… I’ve been seeing the usual in Therapist Land.
They’ve been saying, ‘Yeah, we saw that, too. You can believe your eyes.’ and ‘We see history repeating. You’re not crazy.’ They’ve been announcing their social media breaks, validating people’s lived experience, and meme-ing it up with the best of them. Very human, very the horrors persist, but so do we of them.
In Girlie-pop Marketing Land, on the other hand, I’ve been noticing more ‘business as usual’ content. This isn’t surprising to me. And I’m not mad at it. But it is why I’ve written and pressed publish on this post.
For context: I follow and enjoy content from two business owners who fall into the Girlie-pop Marketing category (according to me). Both are impressive to me. Sharing a volume of fab, sometimes spicy, usually helpful content I fuck with heavily. One talks sales, and the other is a TikTok growth strategist. Both are white women living in America.
I’ve noticed myself watching them closely for the past couple of weeks. One has shared some content that implies we share similar values, but it’s vague. The other has been talking nonstop about TikTok, the ban, and its return, but never from a holistic or political perspective. I’m not suggesting people, brands, or businesses have to share their values loudly and proudly on the internet.
But observing myself observing them has illuminated that I want to do business with humans who think outside of themselves and give a fuck about other humans while making it easy for their clients to make informed buying decisions.
I’m sharing more about what we value at TOD because I’ve spent money with a weird-MAGA-ass-American-business-coach and I was high-key so annoyed I didn’t know until after.
Additional hot goss backstory:
In 2020, I signed up for a $8000 business mastermind group after paying a coach for her ~$1500 group program and finding it valuable. It supported the growth of my business. Finally, I signed up for a 3-month extension to keep coaching with her. I don’t remember the cost of this one, but it was likely another $2500.
All in USD, the standard for the online business space, still, I cried in CAD at the exchange rate.
Because she built friendships with some of her students and clients, and so had I, one day, her personal Facebook profile appeared in my recommendations. Naturally, I clicked.
Who were our mutual friends?
How locked down is her profile?
What does she share on her page?
How does that differ from her business IG page?
As a 29 year old woman (then 25) who’s been a FB user for half her life, I’ll find myself on your brother’s dog’s sister’s owner’s grandma’s profile for NO reason. Looking at her profile pictures from 2013. It’s a flower close-up from her garden. Pop off, granny. I love a good profile-peruse, OK?
Tap, tap, swipe, swipe. Then, a profile picture of her holding a sign, smiling outside, and clearly in a crowd.
It reads ‘ABORTION’, but the letters ‘B’ and ‘R’ were crossed out and replaced with ‘D’ and ‘P’, respectively, spelling ADOPTION.
Unbeknownst to 2020-me, her American-flag-coded branding should have raised a red (white and blue) flag. But before working with American clients and service providers beginning in 2020, I did not know about weird-white-American-Christian-cult behaviour.
Before the public lynching of George Floyd on May 25, 2020, I didn’t understand the history and present-day outcomes of systemic racism in America.
Before I worked with an Asian-American mother living in Idaho who feared for her children’s safety leading up to the 2020 American presidential election, I didn’t understand how and why a spray-tanned failure of a businessman, celebrity president got elected, or the gravity of the situation at hand.
Now I know better. I try to do better. I read books. I look to people with lived experience. I don’t engage my grandpa in conversations about (trans)women in sports.
Because neither of us are women’s sports fans, and there’s no invitation to have a conversation. I explore how themes of dominance and exploitation emerge in my work and the content I create for my clients. I explore how themes of dominance and control emerge in my parenting and see children as the oppressed class they are.
When I was face-to-face with my then-coach’s profile picture, I didn’t know everything I know now. But I did and still do believe strongly that abortion is healthcare.
I am endlessly grateful to live in a country that recognizes healthcare as a right and provides universal healthcare, which currently covers medical and surgical abortion care. To be clear, there is work to be done, abortion care is not currently easily and widely accessible in Canada, especially to people in remote Northern communities.
It was frustrating to know I had spent (lotsa) money with this person. The world is much more nuanced than changing two letters on a poster board and thinking you could possibly know the holiest choice for any woman, in any situation, unless it’s your own body.
My careful watching of the marketing girlie-pops whose content I like isn’t really about them. Or about discovering if they’re the 45% of American white women that I am side-eyeing as the rest of the world looks on in horror, drawing parallels to 1930s Germany.
It’s a message from me to me to share loudly and proudly:
As an LGBTQ+-owned, woman-owned business, Tara On Demand Ltd. is committed to building an intersectional business that celebrates diversity in every form, from race and sexuality to (dis)ability, neurodiversity, religion, parenthood, and caring responsibilities.
Tara On Demand Ltd. respectfully acknowledges the Beaver, Cree, Dene, and Métis people as the original caretakers of the Lands and surrounding areas where we are headquartered. We are grateful to live, learn, work and play on Treaty 8 territory within Turtle Island and acknowledge these Lands have been home to diverse and sovereign First Nations and Inuit Nations since Time Immemorial.
Transparency helps people make informed purchasing decisions, and we vote with our dollars daily. (Hello, overconsumption culture, meet the dying planet.)
In November of 2024, I underestimated how much America hates Black women. Since 2020, since I’ve been intentionally consuming the American news cycle, I have severely overestimated how much America will excuse white men.
As a person who lives, and has lived for my whole life, in the Texas-of-Canada where ‘drill baby drill’ and tough-guy-mentality reign supreme…
where pride cross-walks are adorned with skid marks hours after painting…
where the federal MP who represents my constituency voted against banning conversion therapy in 2021…
where a grown man I worked for in 2019 refused to celebrate Pride month on the company’s Facebook page. Despite the openly queer men on staff, and young men showing up to job sites inebriated, and one of our coworkers completing suicide at the age of 24, only months earlier…
I want you to know, too, that I am hopeful. In The Faithful Gardener, Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estés says:
“New seed is faithful, it comes on the wind
Whether you want it or not
And it roots most deeply in the places that are most empty”
I hope new ideas and ways of living are taking root here, now.
I hope people will have conversations, read books, discover empathy, heal, love themselves, and be exposed to perspectives outside their worldviews. Creativity, queerness, expression, art, joy, love, and visions of a better world have changed me.
I am hopeful that love actually wins. With this blog post, I’m building part of that world when I say Tara On Demand values aligned client relationships. Period.
There’s no CTA on this post.
But I wanted to share more about the places I’m occupying online and offline and people’s work I consume that supports me to dream up a better world. You can check out the list here.
