For those of you who watched the Super Bowl and the half-time show more for the commercial entertainment, you may have noticed something interesting: Women are being given their due in many of the commercials that aired during the biggest television event of the year. Brands and their agencies have embraced the novel idea that women should be portrayed as intelligent, strong human beings. I’m down with that. I love Helen Mirren and Serena Williams; Bravo to Budweiser and Mini Cooper for creating intelligent ads featuring smart, strong women. And give me Queen Bey in a dance off with Bruno Mars all day long.

This is all coming about at as we are in the cultural upswing of a pro-feminist movement led by strong, independent voices such as Lena Dunham, Jennifer Lawrence and Amy Schumer. But prior to this, there was a Super Bowl spot that can lay claim to being the first feminist Super Bowl ad and the first Super Bowl commercial targeted specifically to women.

Sixteen years ago, the feisty new cable network, Oxygen, was preparing to launch on 02.02 (Get it? O2…Oxygen?? We were very, very clever). The Super Bowl aired on 02.01 and in that game (second quarter, first commercial break), a launch spot for this feisty new network made Super Bowl history. The spot titled “I Am Baby” was a funny, feminist homage about changing the expectations of what a network for women should be. It was about refusing to labeled by tradition, by society, by institutions. It was quite literally about the birth of a network whose goal was to release the power of women into world. It was ahead of its time.

I look back on that spot now with a mixture of pride, nostalgia, and poignancy. It was a brand anthem that delivered a message that is possibly more relevant today than it was then. Oxygen has gone through many rebrands and redirects as all young networks do, but the vision that launch spot delivered endures today.

It so happens that I was extremely pregnant when we launched Oxygen that Super Bowl Sunday. My daughter Tess will be sixteen years old this April. So, on the Sunday of Super Bowl 50, I shared with her the “I Am Baby” commercial.

She watched it. Then watched it again.

“So… no labels. Right, Mom?”

“Yup.”

“I would watch this network.”

So would I, Tess. So would I.

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