Not For Sale
For the ones whose stories were never meant to be sponsored.
Hey love,
This one’s not light.
It’s not inspirational.
It’s not here to "raise awareness."
It’s here to tell the truth.
About how our pain gets packaged.
About how our stories get sold.
It's about how our culture gets stolen—then resold to us like clearance merch with a marketing team behind it.
If you’ve ever felt like your grief was being monetized, your history edited, or your dignity put on a timeline…
This letter is for you.
Read it slowly. Share if you must. But know this:
You can repost the quote. You’ll never own the weight (Ms.Maine)
I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about how our pain gets packaged.
I hear it in speeches.
I see it in campaigns.
Black trauma. Black struggle. Black death—
captioned, branded, softened, and then sold back to us with a hashtag.
Our stories turned into slogans.
Our grief sold out by noon.
Moodboard activism at full retail price.
Let me be crystal clear:
We are not for sale.
Not our voices.
Not our ancestors.
Not the scars they left behind.
I listened to my forever President Obama recently, and he said something I already knew—but needed to feel again.
He has a way of naming what’s been sitting in your chest like a stone, and suddenly—it floats.
He talked about corporations.
How quickly they show up when it’s trendy,
and how slowly they move when it might cost them something.
That stayed with me.
Because I’ve seen it.
You’ve seen it.
The annual Black History Month ad campaigns are so watered down they evaporate on contact.
The empowerment posts sit next to products that mock our culture and erase our realities.
The T-shirt with slogans they didn’t survive.
The playlist they didn’t understand.
The "solidarity” sold with disclaimers in the fine print.
It’s not just frustrating.
It’s violence dressed in validation.
We are expected to be grateful for breadcrumbs,
while our art, our dialect, our rhythm, and our grief
are picked apart, marketed, and worn like limited-edition accessories—
by brands that couldn’t survive five minutes in our shoes.
The same shoes they resell to us at 300% markup.
But here’s the part I need you to know:
I’m not here to make pain profitable.
I’m not here to be readily accepted.
And I will not dilute the truth just to make it "go down smooth."
If you came here looking for a feel-good moment about racial justice—
you’re on the wrong page.
This isn’t your TED talk.
This isn’t your DEI panel with catered trauma and complimentary hashtags.
Our stories are not souvenirs.
Our dignity is not a licensing opportunity.
Our history is not available in bulk.
We are not here for trend cycles.
We are not here for your curated allyship.
We are not your content.
We are not your costume.
We are no longer on that plantation.
And I’ll be damned if I let the highest bitter think otherwise.
With unapologetic grace,
Ms. Maine
Founder of Girl, Why Girl, Yes