Brianna McDonnell is a performer and creative boss, who is passionate about representing marginalized bodies in her work. Through content creation, performance, creative direction and theatrical producing, McDonnell’s work focuses on taking up space and owning your own story.
Founder of The B Word (Inc), Brianna McDonnell creates fashion content for women with bodies that aren’t seen in the fashion world. As a life long, plus size, fashion lover, McDonnell created The B Word as a platform to share her personal style. She quickly found that the messaging that resonated most with her audience was focused on self-love, being unapologetically authentic and owning the space you take up in the world.
The B Word continues to be an online space to share fashion, but McDonnell is more than a body positive blogger. The B Word produces, styles, directs, and facilitates interactive fashion opportunities, as well as using her creative vision to produce large scale projects. Since creating the hashtag campaign, #BEinyourskin, in 2015, McDonnell continues her work to empower and inspire women to love and celebrate their bodies. Every August, The B Word blog and social media channels launch the #BEinyourskin 31 Day Body Confidence Challenge, which is a month-long social media campaign that offers tools to help build self-esteem from within and body confidence. Taking this mission a step further, in 2017 McDonnell created the #BEinyourskin Plus Size Editorial Wall Calendar, a twelve-month wall calendar featuring twenty plus size influencers, bloggers and models, and was featured in Cosmopolitan, Yahoo, Bustle, Refinery 29 and many more.
With a background in theater and a passion for performing, McDonnell continued her passion for storytelling with The B Productions. The B Productions is a Los Angeles-based theatrical production company focused on producing works that entertain while provoking thought. Previously touring Southern California with conceptual productions of “25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee”, directed by Daniel Guerrero, and “Godspell”, directed by McDonnell, The B Productions made a home in North Hollywood in 2016 with their production of, “Little Shop of Horrors”. Continuing their theatrical work, The B Productions collected a group of personal monologues for an original sociopolitical piece titled, “Polite People Don’t Talk About That”, and donated all proceeds to the American Civil Liberties Union in 2017.
McDonnell continued her creative directing, partnering with plus size fashion brands such as JCPenney, STARZ, Big Fig Mattress, Torrid, Charlotte Russe Plus, Talbots, Soncy and more, to create sponsored content for The B Word. She continues to work behind the scenes, creatively directing campaigns for independent brands such as Zelie For She and The Plus Bus.
McDonnell lives in Los Angeles and works as a social media specialist and content producer. McDonnell is loving this work and looks forward to new opportunities. Looking to move into film and television, McDonnell is developing projects. Working on a one woman stage show, in hopes of getting back onstage in 2019.