Can You Be Fired For Being Sexy?
“If it’s too graphic for the six o’clock news, how is it okay for a nine year old kid?”
You Are Sick!
Welp, I’ve been called a lot of things this week in X-world.
Karen. Idiot. Retard. Floppy Tits. Horse Face. Fucking Ugly. Fat Ass. And a bunch of variations of Old Hag.
Still, I was pretty surprised when a sitting Congressman and 2026 Gubernatorial front-runner chimed in. He’s right of course. I am sick with a whopper of a head cold that’s headed into week three. He is also right that Adrienne Campbell should be commended for her amazing transformation, which no doubt changed her internally as much as it did externally.
In fact, several comments that came under Congressman Donalds, accused me of being jealous. To which I respond, HELL YES I AM. I wish I had the level of dedication (and self-love) it would take me to shed these floppy tits and fat ass!
I was also a bit surprised with the Chair of the Board of Education decided to weigh in. I live in Florida so it is normal for public servants, like Ryan Petty, to bash the “leftists” while cashing a paycheck partially funded by our taxes. But, I was surprised at their rookie mistakes. Punching down is always bad optics.
All Congressman Donalds and Chair Petty accomplished was elevating my nothing little tweet about the importance of the privacy settings for public employees (especially those who are working with kids) to over 90,000 views and counting.
Their admiration for her discipline aside; pictures like the one Deputy Secretary Campbell shared have gotten a lot of folks fired. I am not re-posting her once public photos out of respect for her new privacy settings.
Spoiler Alert: I didn’t label the picture as “adult content,” Elon did.
Now, if this were a debate over the hyper-sexualization of female athletes, this would be an entirely different blog. Maybe, I’ll veer off into that topic soon. In the meantime, the women of The View, spoke on this topic a few years ago and to get an idea of the variety of competition suits available, check out Angel’s Competition Bikinis. My best guess, from the photo’s is Adrienne Campbell chose “the most revealing” micro-cut bottom.
But, despite what the folks over on X think, this isn’t about shaming or sexualizing women. It’s about the never-ending mismanagement of the Department of Juvenile Justice (DJJ) and Governor Ron DeSantis’ all to often overlooked role as the Chief Executive Officer of the State of Florida.
Drip, Drop, Dribble
Governor Ron DeSantis loves to fire people who disagree with him. He has, what Craig Pittman called, “an appetite for ousters.” But transparency and continuity aren’t really Ron’s thing, which means some folks, inexplicably, get to just hang on regardless of how many times they’ve distracted from the mission at hand.
For example, in 2021, shortly after being tapped for Secretary of DJJ, journalists from Florida Politics and Politico asked Secretary Hall about his 2014 Ed.D dissertation in support of infusing Critical Race Theory to improve leadership qualities in school administrators.
I don’t really know how Secretary Hall was able to distance himself from his dissertation enough to placate Governor DeSantis, but he did and remains the Secretary to this day despite a very WOKE dissertation.
“This access is often controlled by teachers, who represent a field that is occupied predominantly by White, middle-class women, and who sometimes bring with them attitudes and perceptions that further marginalize children of color, thus impeding their ability to participate fully in a school’s curriculum.”
“This practice, again, is accomplished using diverse strategies and systems, but at the foundation of those processes are the relationships that his team has built with their students, and the practice of helping students learn how to ‘code switch’…”
“In the first tenet, the role of race and the ‘acknowledgement of racism historically in our society’ is important for examination.”
“In the second tenet, ‘White culture’ is deemed to be privileged and the norm; therefore is there any reflection of this privilege revealed in the study or perceptions that evolve regarding this ‘invisible norm’.”
“I did not intentionally fail to see or listen when sleeping in this advantaged life of White privilege, but in awakening from this sleep, I can now lead an existence focused on exposing inequity and working to counter its effects.”
After Secretary Hall weathered that little dust-up, he set his sites on the Herculean task of moving academic instruction under the DJJ umbrella. It is a massive under-taking because it requires building an entire school district from scratch. Contracting, technology, staffing, policy-development, rule-making, budgeting, federal and state compliance, and Lord only knows what else. He hired Adrienne Campbell to help him with this heavy lift.
For whatever reason, Secretary Hall and Deputy Campbell decided to push for a July 1, 2024 “go-live” date for the Florida Scholar’s Academy. That was a mistake. It doesn’t take much to imagine how court-supervised teenagers reacted to their new access to the world wide web, nonetheless, for whatever reason, Hall and Campbell failed to prepare for this inevitability. Recently, Secretary Hall, referred to widespread access to porn among incarcerated students as “growing pains.” The lack of thorough planning and the rush to get started, has led to massive budget over-runs.
In short, since August of 2024, DJJ has just been drip, drop, dribbling these on-going problems and legislator’s are growing impatient. So too are parents who, apparently, have been contacting their Senators and Representatives.
Meanwhile, Back At The Gym
According to her previously public Instagram posts, Deputy Secretary Campbell apparently set her sites on an equally as Herculean personal task. She documented her health journey on Instagram. And therein lies the rub.
So, now Governor DeSantis and Secretary Hall must decide if Deputy Secretary Adrienne Campbell’s competition body-building suit meets The State of Florida’s social media policy standards for public employees.
As attorney Elisabeth M. Baker-Pham told Forbes, "The Internet never forgets, as we have seen from time to time, years-old social media posts resurface to cause issues – including in employment – for the poster.”
Moreover, Governor DeSantis has staked his political legacy on the bright red line of what is appropriate for public consumption and what is not. He started with “empowering parents” to petition for the removal of content they viewed as inappropriate for their school-aged children. “If it’s too graphic for the six o’clock news, how is it okay for a nine year old kid?” he asked.
Now Ron has to ask himself one more question. Does his commitment to empowering parents and protecting kids extend to “those parents” and “those kids?” He will have to decide if there is a difference between this and the firing of Boca Raton high school teacher Olivia Sprauer after she posted poolside bikini pictures and this situation.
Maybe, it is different. That’s certainly what Bailey Davis thought after the New Orleans Saints fired her for posting photos that they believed fell below their standards. “I didn’t think of it as a sexy photo. I had it taken for my portfolio, to show at future dance auditions. It was a full-body shot because I wanted to show off my physique, my athleticism.”
Secretary Hall has an important question to answer as well. Remember when Florida became a national embarrassment over Michelangelo’s David statute that not only landed Tallahassee Classical on Saturday Night Live but also led to the ousting of the school principal? Well, according to Capitol Soup, “before co-founding Tallahassee Classical School and serving as its inaugural principal, Campbell developed and managed statewide professional development programs for school districts, institutions of higher education, and principals based on best practices, and evolving standards and statutes at the Florida Department of Education.” Secretary Hall needs to ponder if Campbell’s inability to see around corners is a feature or a bug.
This question isn’t unique to Florida, of course. Patrice Brown likes fashion and she liked posting her outfits on the way out the door to teach her fourth graders in Atlanta but she was fired after her skinny jeans and tight dresses went viral. "That teacher looks good AF but her attire is just inappropriate to be teaching a 4th grade glass," one person commented on Twitter.
What’s The Answer?
I don’t know but, as the kind folks of X reminded me, I wasn’t elected to office. That honor goes to Governor DeSantis. So, Governor, what’s the answer?
Does Florida offer wiggle room to athletes who are documenting a health journey and, if so, where is that spelled out in policy?
Are employees who work with children held to a different standard and, if so, where is that spelled out in policy?
Does parental rights include parents whose children are incarcerated?
When you speak of inappropriate materials accessible to children are you limiting that to hard-copy print materials (such as a book) or does that extend itself to on-line materials?
Finally, Governor, before Deputy Secretary Campbell’s full-body transformation was posted, I recommended to Secretary Hall that he conduct refresher training on DJJ social media policies after seeing some alarming posts. I recommend you look into that.
