U.S. Olympic gold medalist Kendall Coyne Schofield made sports history on Friday night as the first woman ever to compete in the NHL All-Star Game SuperSkills Competition, an event that shows off the talent of some of the best professional hockey players.
In the past, the annual tradition has been reserved for male players in the league. But when Colorado Avalanche center Nathan MacKinnon had to drop out of the competition because of a foot injury, his team tapped Coyne Schofield to replace him. Coyne Schofield, who is a member of the U.S. women’s national ice hockey team and won a gold medal in 2018, jumped at the chance—and on Friday, she hit the ice, ready to fly.
“It was a no-brainer,” she said. “Obviously, it’s huge honor to be the first woman to take part in the NHL Skills competition. It was surreal.”
Coyne Schofield kicked things off by opening the fast skate event and ended up securing a lightning-quick time of 14.346 seconds. She landed in seventh place ahead of Arizona Coyotes player Clayton Keller, while Edmonton Oilers Connor McDavid won first place and his third title in the event. But to Coyne Schofield, what was important was changing the rules of the hockey competition.
“My first impression was, like, ‘I can do this,’” Coyne Schofield said at a news conference after the event. “My speed is definitely my strength. Obviously, I was a little nervous, but I knew it was a moment that was going to break a lot of barriers, and a moment that would change the perceptions of our game.”
Coyne Schofield wowed a lot of the hockey world, including MacKinnon, the player she replaced.
“It’s amazing, her stride,” he said on NBC Sports Network. “She is so powerful.”
Others sang Coyne Schofield’s praises and noted what a significant moment her skate was for women in hockey.
When Abby Sams entered a contest to model for Aerie, she didn’t know that a viral online moment would come with the winning package. The 20-year-old college student, who has multiple chronic illnesses and uses a wheelchair, saw it as a chance to increase representation for disabled women in fashion. “My immediate thought was, There are never disabled models that enter these things, or at least enter and win,” she tells Glamour via email. “Which was then followed by my second thought, [It] wouldn’t hurt to try!”
So Sams completed the contest entry requirements: She filmed a video explaining what “Aerie Real” meant to her (“It means beauty comes in all shapes, sizes, ethnicities, and abilities,” she says), submitted it, and moved on with studying for her finals. She got the news that she’d be starring in the brand’s “Aerie Bras Make You Feel Real Good” campaign in late May. “I was in utter shock,” she remembers. “I literally couldn’t believe it was real.”
PHOTO: COURTESY OF AERIE
Sams joined 56 other women—from brand spokespeople (or Role Models) Iskra Lawrence and Aly Raisman to fellow contest winners, which included a cancer survivor, a woman who uses crutches, a woman with a colostomy bag, and a woman with an insulin pump—for an unretouched photoshoot at Aerie’s Pittsburgh headquarters.
She recalls being impressed by the care that went into making the set accessible to all participants: “The world is an obstacle course [for me], and I was ready to not be able to participate in a lot of things on set,” she explains. “I was beautifully surprised with how accessible they made everything and how much they went out of their way to help me if something wasn’t accessible.”
On July 11 Aerie quietly released photos from the bra campaign on its website. As soon as she saw them, Sams shared the images with her Twitter followers: “@Aerie just sneakily released some of my photos! Look at this disability representation people!!!” she wrote.
Overnight, Sams’ tweet went viral. Her initial post racked up over 24,000 likes and 5,000 retweets.
It’s not hard to see why the Internet had such a strong reaction to those images: The “Aerie Bras Make You Feel Real Good” campaign, which officially launches on August 2, embodies a new level of commitment to portraying “real” shoppers, one largely fueled by actual customers. There are a range of women—at various points on the spectrums of ability, age, illness, and size—represented, proudly wearing the same Aerie bras.
But Sams didn’t anticipate the flood of positive feedback from social media users. “I was initially afraid that there would be a lot of rude comments, since disabled models aren’t really a thing,” she says. “Instead, I was overwhelmed with support and love and so many people saying how much it meant […] that they had someone that looked like them, or had the same chronic illnesses as them, in big media.”
“I’ve had a lot of people with my same chronic illnesses message me and say that finding out we shared illnesses made them feel less alone[,]” Sams says. “It gave a lot of people confidence in themselves and started a fire in a lot of people.”
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PHOTO: COURTESY OF AERIE
Sams was a fan of Aerie’s body-positive ethos before modeling for the brand. “Seeing models with stretch marks and belly rolls meant a lot to a lot of people, myself included,” she says of the first #AerieREAL ads from 2014. She believes featuring women with chronic illnesses and disabilities is an even bigger move for the company.
Sams became chronically ill during high school, which was a critical time for her body image and mental health. “I had never seen myself represented after I got sick in media like this,” she says. “When I was younger, I was able-bodied and didn’t really think about it—at that time, I was upset [that] all the models were tall and thin.” She wants Aerie’s campaign to change how able-bodied shoppers perceive women with disabilities: “I want to normalize diversity and disability. I want [people] to see it and know that limitations don’t mean I’m sitting at home, wallowing in self pity. I can do things and have fun and be a model, all while being chronically ill, and that’s normal.”
PHOTO: COURTESY OF AERIE
According to Sams, representing all of their customers in their promotional imagery is just the start of what brands can do to become more inclusive. The in-store shopping experience is often difficult for her—boutique-style stores are too narrow for her to maneuver her wheelchair, and “accessible” dressing rooms are often crowded with furniture for able-bodied guests. “I’m very unlikely to go back to a store if I didn’t feel welcome because I was in a wheelchair or because I couldn’t maneuver through the store,” she says.
PHOTO: COURTESY OF AERIE
Sams sees her appearance in Aerie’s campaign—which will appear both on its website and in its stores—as an opportunity for more brands to recognize their diverse customers and cast their campaigns accordingly. “We’re here. We exist. We want to feel beautiful,” she says. “Aerie really set the bar high with the diversity in [its] models, so I’m hoping I can expect to see the same level of diversity in other brands as well.”
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