When you think of basketball sneakers, what’s the first shoe that comes to mind? Air Jordans? Maybe a Kobe? Or perhaps a LeBron? There is nothing wrong with those sneakers; they are all popular and have stood for excellence in performance for decades. But there’s one issue: they are designed for men.
Enter Moolah Kicks, the first sneaker company to sell basketball sneakers specifically made for girls and women. Founder and president Natalie White created her company to solve this issue when she saw a 2019 ad in a magazine featuring all WNBA players, but the shoes they were promoting were all male signature sneakers.
“It really struck me because what is the message that it’s saying?” White posited to Swish Appeal.
It’s saying, you can be the absolute best at women’s basketball, but you’ll still be wearing and promoting sneakers that aren’t named for you. And that was the first time that I really thought about it and I said, wait a second…We as women’s basketball players have kind of been conditioned to think we should be happy to be here and we should be happy that the LeBrons come in our size.
We should be happy to be able to shop in the children’s section and to have access to all these shoes. But that mentality is really continuing to perpetuate this message that…
