Dallas woman stars as lesbian face of Avon in Super Bowl ad

Article from The Dallas Voice
by Tammye Nash, Senior Editor

Avon and lesbian: Not two words you’d usually expect to hear in the same sentence.

But that’s only if you don’t know Daryn DeZengotita.

DeZengotita, of Dallas, is one of five Avon sales representatives chosen about two years ago to serve as the “faces of Avon” around the world in an advertising and marketing campaign. Now that commercial is going to get one of the largest television audiences of the year when it airs Sunday, Feb. 1, during the Super Bowl.

“It was about two years ago that I was selected to audition for — and got a part in — some national TV commercials for Avon,” DeZengotita said this week. “There are a million Avon representatives in the United States. Fifty of those were chosen to audition, and 10 were selected to be in the commercials.”

That’s a pretty exclusive club. But DeZengotita got to take it one step further.
Of the 10 women chosen for the commercials, five were selected to appear in Avon’s global marketing campaign aimed at recruiting new sales reps. DeZengotita was one of the five.

Then last fall, she and one other woman were asked to return to the studio to shoot some extra scenes for a new launch of the commercial and the recruiting effort.

“It was right before Thanksgiving that they called and said they were recutting the commercial to specifically target the issues with the economy right now,” she explained. “They wanted to tell people that if you’re worried about [the downturn] in the economy and are looking for a way to make extra money, now is the perfect time to become an Avon representative,” DeZengotita said.

The recruitment campaign turned out to be “wildly successful,” she said, prompting the cosmetics company to purchase advertising time during the Super Bowl this weekend. It will be the second commercial spot after Jennifer Hudson — “who is also a spokeswoman for Avon” — sings the National Anthem.

“It’s been rumored that it will also run during the halftime show. But I have been told that isn’t true,” DeZengotita noted.

DeZengotita said she is starting her eighth year as an Avon sales representative, and that she started working with the company as a way to maintain income while at the same time spending more time at home with her partner, Celia Barshop, and their two adopted sons, who are now ages 7 and 8.

“It’s the typical Avon story,” she said. “I had my own business in the IT industry.

But then my partner and I adopted our children, and I realized I needed something much more flexible. In my old business, if my customer’s e-mail went down and I wasn’t immediately available because I had a sick kid at home, they were not very happy about it. Now, if I can’t deliver a customer’s lipstick right away because I need to be at home with a sick child, my customers understand that. They are OK with that.”

For some Avon reps, selling cosmetics is a part-time job; for some it’s less of a job, really, and more of a hobby.

But DeZengotita, it’s a full-time business that she takes very seriously. She even operates her own retail Avon store — “which is unusual in our business” — and she “runs herd on about 100 other Avon ladies.”

And with her part in the advertising and recruitment campaign, DeZengotita is a very prominent “face” for the company. So, has her sexual orientation been any kind of stumbling block to her advancement within the Avon ranks? Absolutely not, she said.

“When I went in for the initial auditions, they had us all in this big holding room, waiting our turn. When people would finish and come back out, everyone would ask, ‘What kind of questions are they asking you? What do they want to know?’ And they would say, ‘Oh, they asked me a lot of questions about my family, things like what my husband does and how he is involved in my Avon business.’

“I heard that, and I immediately thought, ‘Uh-oh.’ So when it was my turn to go in, first thing I said was, ‘I am gay, and I am not careful with my pronouns.’ They busted out laughing. They asked me all kinds of questions about my family and my partner and our children,” DeZengotita said. “It [her sexual orientation] has been the biggest non-issue, and they have shown absolutely no hesitation whatsoever in promoting me as the face of Avon around the world.”

DeZengotita said she hasn’t made much of a big deal over being such a visible part of Avon’s global marketing campaign so far. But with the ad set to air during the Super Bowl on Sunday, she decided to speak up.

“I think it is kind of a big deal,” she said. “It shows that we [as LGBT people] really are everywhere. We are even the face of Avon.”

Darn DeZengotita operats Avon the Store at Preston Trail Village, located at Campbell Road and Preston Trail. Her Web site is www.avonbeauty.biz.

Super Bowl for the Clueless - Outsports' annual guide to the big game

Although I am not much of a football fan, I have to admit, there is something about the way a woman talks about the Super Bowl game that can get me a bit excited...or maybe it's just the woman that gets me excited...hmmm…either way, it's a big party day for most lesbians and having a little knowledge about the game is always a bonus. Knowing that I cannot be the only football challenged lesbian (is that the politically correct term?), I found this helpful Super Bowl Guide and thought it was quite appropriate for this Sunday.

Super Bowl for the Clueless
By Jim Buzinski
Outsports.com

The Super Bowl is again upon us, and like death and taxes there is no escaping it. The teams were off last week and we still heard about Tom Brady and his model girlfriend in addition to a lineman who used to castrate lambs with his teeth. Mercifully, the game is almost here.

Since some of you reading this barely know who is playing, Outsports offers as a public service our annual Super Bowl for the Clueless.

WHAT: Super Bowl 42 (I am lousy with Roman numerals, so will ignore the NFL’s designation of SB XLII). The New England Patriots represent the American Football Conference and the New York Giants the National Football Conference. The game will be played Sunday with a 6:30 p.m. EST kickoff from Glendale, Ariz. Fox will broadcast the game.

The Patriots (18-0) are seeking to become the first NFL team to finish 19-0 and join the 1972 Miami Dolphins as the only unbeaten teams. The Giants (13-6) have taken the hard road, becoming only the third team in history to win three consecutive road playoff games to reach the Super Bowl.

New England is a big favorite, with the Las Vegas pointspread favoring them by 12 points. They are the biggest favorite since the 2001 Patriots were 14-point underdogs to St. Louis (New England won that game in a huge upset, something that gives Giants fans hope).

WHERE: The game will be played in Glendale, Ariz., in suburban Phoenix at the University of Phoenix Stadium. There is no University of Phoenix team, but the school, which has a heavy online presence, paid $154 million for 20 years to the naming rights to the stadium. The stadium architect, Peter Eisenman, is a New York Giants fan, so he is assured great seats to the game.

The area is not used to seeing quality professional football, being home to the mediocre Arizona Cardinals, a franchise that has won one playoff game since 1948, being based in Chicago, then St. Louis and since 1988 Arizona.

FASHION NOTE: The Giants, the designated road team, will wear their white jerseys with light gray pants and maroon numbers. The Patriots will wear their home dark blue jerseys with light silver numbers.

THE CITIES: New York vs. Boston. Arrogant know-it-all fans vs. arrogant know-it-all fans; insufferable to those of us outside the Northeast corridor. Think Yankees vs. Red Sox in baseball and you get the idea of the fan base in each city. The downside? One city will get to throw a victory parade. The upside? One city won’t.

THE TEAMS, GOSSIP EDITION: The Patriots are chasing history, and trying to outrun the shame of being caught cheating in their opening day game against the Jets for illegally videotaping New York’s defensive signals. The team was fined $500,000 and stripped of a draft pick. In response, the New York Post has run an * all season besides their record in the standings.

In addition, safety Rodney Harrison – voted by his peers the dirtiest player in the league – was suspended four games for using human growth hormone. Nose tackle Vince Woolfork has been fined four times this season for dirty play, including when he poked Giants running back Brandon Jacobs in the eye during their regular season game, ala Moe of the Three Stooges.

The Pats are led by star quarterback Tom Brady, who fathered a child out of wedlock (with actress Bridget Moynahan) and now goes out with supermodel Giselle Bundchen, who dated Leonard Di Caprio for six years. Brady lives in Boston but makes the New York gossip sheets more than almost any full-time resident for his frequent forays into the city. He’s even had to deal with the nastiest rumor of all – that he is losing his hair and seeing a hair-plug specialist. Oh, the horror!

On the plus side, Brady is a fashion-plate, consistently one of the great heartthrobs for gay men and considering being a Calvin Klein model. On the field, his play is impeccable, having set a record with 50 touchdown passes this season.

Even their coach, Bill Belichick, has a colorful off-field life. A New Jersey construction worked accused Belichick of being the “other man” in a divorce proceeding against his wife, a New York Giants receptionist (Belichick was an assistant coach for the Giants until 1991). The coach has paid the women more than $150,000 in cash and gifts, including a summer rental on the Jersey shore. She has denied the accusation but is said to be attending the Super Bowl.

On the field, Belichick is brilliant, secretive, arrogant and paranoid – think Richard Nixon in a hoodie. No coach prepares his team better and is able to compartmentalize distractions.

Patriots owner Bob Kraft, meanwhile, made news in 2005 while on a visit to Russia. There he showed Russian President Vladimir V. Putin his “4.94-carat, diamond-encrusted 2005 Super Bowl ring” … which Putin promptly pocketed. This reminds me of a Russian historian, who when asked to sum up his countrymen’s national character, replied: “They steal.”

The Giants, despite being from New York, are kind of boring by comparison. Quarterback Eli Manning, of the Manning quarterback dynasty, is still going out with his college sweetheart and doesn’t give Page Six much to write about. Lineman Grey Ruegamer did give a colorful interview about his days castrating lambs, but no one outside his immediate family and lambs everywhere had ever heard of Ruegamer before this week.

The Giants do have a gay connection. Tight end Jeremy Shockey twice was slammed for uttering anti-gay comments (including calling a rival coach a “homo”), but he suffered a season-ending injury in December and has not been heard from since; karma’s a bitch.

Defensive lineman Michael Strahan, in the middle of a nasty divorce last year, denied charges by his estranged wife that he is gay. Strahan, though, is very gay-friendly, and has done work for the Men’s Health Crisis, a New York anti-AIDS group. “I have plenty of friends that are bi or homosexual,” he said. “It's fine with me. This is New York City. If you can't accept people for being people, then you have no business being here." Strahan is one of the good guys.

THE HALFTIME ENTERTAINMENT: Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers! Wow, that will really draw the coveted 18-29 demo. At least the NFL won’t have to worry about Petty exposing his nipple, though my friend Jim Allen hopes he performs some of his songs that have sly drug-related references.

Alicia Keys and ‘American Idol’ winner Jordin Sparks will perform in the pre-game, with Sparks signing the National Anthem. She is the daughter of former New York Giants and Dallas Cowboys cornerback Phillippi Sparks.

COMMERCIALS: Face it, a lot of you will watch only for the commercials, lame as they often are (each 30-second spot sells for $2,7 million; for that money you think they'd come up with more creative spots). We all wonder if there will be controversy like last year, when a Snickers ad was blasted by some for being homophobic.

Lesbian fans will be thrilled to know that Victoria’s Secret will advertise this year. For the guys, Under Armour, the skintight, body-hugging apparel, is making its debut. We can only hope they have recruited some NFL hotties for the ads.

According to AP, Bridgestone Tire has two spots: “One ad features a car accelerating toward Richard Simmons as he dances on a road at night. In the other, a woman screams as the car she's riding in approaches a squirrel nibbling on an acorn.” In addition, several ads done by amateurs will make the cut. If you miss any ads, YouTube will be flooded with them after the game.

THE GAME: After a zillion-hour pregame show and huge buildup, a football game will be played. The Patriots have won three Super Bowls since 2001, each by three points. In addition, these two teams met in the last game of the regular season and the Patriots won a thriller, 38-35. A close game is possible, but I doubt it will happen.

New England’s toughest games, save for their comeback win in a dome at Indianapolis, have all come in cold or bad weather. The conditions in Arizona will be perfect (the stadium has a retractable roof and will be open unless bad weather threatens). A dry, fast track favors a New England offense that set a record for points and touchdowns in a season. Randy Moss, Wes Welker, Laurence Maroney – all these Pats are major offensive playmakers and stopping them all is impossible. The Giants have a gritty defense and terrific pass rush, but their secondary is banged-up and suspect. It’s hard to see them slowing the Patriots down enough to keep it close.
One caveat: The big story all week will be the condition of the right ankle ot Brady. He sprained it in the AFC Championship Gameon Jan. 20 and was seen wearing a protective boot the day after. ESPN said that Brady would not have been able to play had the Super Bowl been played one week later and not two. He insists he is fine and I suspect that's the case. However, if he reinjures himself and has to leave the game early, the edge shifts dramatically to New York. Brady's backup, Matt Casell, can match him in the looks departement but not in football talent.

On defense, teams have shown they can move the ball on New England, but the Pats stiffen when opponents get inside their 20-yard line. In the AFC Championship Game, the San Diego Chargers got inside the Patriots' 10-yard line three times and had to settle for field goals; the Giants will need touchdowns, not field goals, to have a chance.

The Giants feature a solid running game with Brandon Jacobs and rookie Ahmad Bradshaw, a key to keeping their offense on the field and Brady and company on the sideline. In addition, Eli Manning is poised and has not thrown an interception in the playoffs. The Giants will be able to move the ball but I don’t see them finishing a lot with touchdowns.

I expect a close game until halftime, when New England pulls away in the second half and caps a perfect season. Patriots 37, Giants 20.