For Arianna Davis, the Senior Director of Editorial & Strategy at O, The Oprah Magazine, her debut book was always destined to be about her greatest role model, the extraordinary artist Frida Kahlo...

As someone who describes herself as growing up feeling very ‘other’ and being from two different cultures and worlds, she found Frida’s authenticity and bold approach to life endlessly inspiring. Her new book What Would Frida Do? A Guide to Living Boldly, is a contemporary guide to life, love, and happiness inspired by Frida. Talk us through your morning routine… These days I wake up and I start with my skincare routine. Right now, I've been using Humanrace, which is Pharrell Williams' new skincare line. Then I let my three-year-old puppy Leo out and give him breakfast. I make myself tea (I'm really into Yogi Tea right now). I wish that I meditated. It's one of those things that I'm always like, "I'm going to wake up earlier this morning so that I can have time to meditate." But usually by the time I’ve got the dog together, got myself together, and got all set up, I usually open Slack and start working for the day.

You’re the Senior Director of Editorial and Strategy at 0, The Oprah Magazine, where you oversee all of OprahMag.com’s editorial, social, and video content – what’s the most challenging part of your role? And what’s the most exciting part about your role?  I think what's challenging is the internet moves so fast and there's just so much always happening. The new cycle is constant. For Oprahmag.com, we're not competing with The New York Times and the CNNs of the world when it comes to keeping up with the latest news, but at the same time, we do still want to keep our readers as informed as possible. We want to do so from the perspective of through the lens of Oprah's very Live Your Best Life sensibility. Day-to-day, I'm fielding pitches from my team and I'm also just looking to see what's happening in the world. The most exciting part is anytime we do something with Oprah herself, and we can connect Oprah with our readers. During the quarantine I've done some Instagram lives with Oprah and we've also had her weigh in and do some stories for the site. 

What’s something Oprah has taught you which you’ve never forgotten?

Authenticity – Oprah is really big on being yourself. She's made a career out of being exactly who she is. She's always leaned into who she is, in her own brand and who she is at her core has never changed. 

You worked as a senior features writer for Refinery29 – a platform that​ has been so influential. Tell us about the woman you were writing for?

I really keep in mind Black and Latino women specifically. My Dad is Black (he's African American) and my mom is Puerto Rican – identity is something that I’ve thought a lot about my entire life. I grew up feeling very ‘other’ and being from two different cultures and worlds, I know very well what it's like to feel marginalized or to feel different than everyone else. It has always been really important for me to make sure that we're speaking to women of color or anyone who has ever been made to feel less than. 

Arianna Davis, Senior Director Of Editorial And Strategy, O, The Oprah Magazine

You never thought, as a woman of colour​, that the world of magazines was for you. How did that feel?

It was sadly, just an acceptance thing of just being, it is what it is. There were certain industries that you just never saw yourself in. Everything changed when I met Jayne Jamison, the publisher of Seventeen magazine, when I was a senior in college. She was speaking at a scholarship dinner and afterwards I basically stopped her in the bathroom and asked for her business card. We ended up getting coffee when I moved to New York and it was really meeting someone in the industry who was willing to help me get my foot in the door. I still am one of the few people who look like me in magazines and even in digital media. Now, I want to try to open the door for younger generations as I go.

You’ve recently published your first book What Would Frida Do? A Guide to Living Boldly. How did you come up with the idea to write a book based on Frida Kahlo’s bold way of living?

There has been an Oscar nominated movie about Frida. There have been books and tons of merchandise over the years and there's an endless amount of things out there about Frida. I wanted to contribute something that hasn't already been done or said and I landed on the lessons that we can learn from her life. Why is it that we are still seeing her face on murals and she's everywhere and why is it that there's still this fandom for her? And what can we learn from that? And so that was where this idea came from of literally me as a really big Frida fan, but also just diving into her life and extracting some of the lessons that I think we can all learn from a woman who lived her life boldly, far ahead of her time.

Frida Kahlo contracted polio at age six and the disease crippled her right leg, which grew shorter than her left and gave her a limp – she teaches us to embrace what makes you different, even if the world sees it as odd. Yet, so many of us desperately want to fit into the world and be seen as normal. What have you learnt in your life about fitting in and embracing yourself? 

Frida did the opposite of fitting in. I feel like she realized from an early age, she wasn't classically beautiful by European standards. She had a very different fashion sense. She had a very unique sensibility when it came to art. She married a man who was by most standards, not the most handsome. She always leaned into the fact that she was different and she wasn't like everyone else. Instead of trying to assimilate or trying to change who she was, she just really leaned into that. The same way that I was talking about Oprah and her really being her most authentic self, I think the same can be said about Frida in that she was exactly who she was.

She had her insecurities and her flaws and she was open about that, but it was very clear at the end of the day, she didn't care what other people thought and she lived her life by her own rules and that to me is really inspiring. Especially when you think about the fact that she was doing all of this in the 1920s and '30s. She was a Mexican woman who was painting about her miscarriage back then, and here we are all these years later, and last year Chrissy Teigen got a lot of criticism for sharing photos of her miscarriage. Frida was just so far ahead of her time. How do you personally live colorfully? I have a lot of color in my apartment. I've always been really big into color in the way that Frida was in my daily life. I love to bring color and joy into the small details. And normally when we're not in a pandemic, travel opens my eyes to the world and inspires me to drink in new cultures and experiences and places.  Typically, I try to go for a walk every day, just so that I can take in fresh air and check out new surroundings and remind myself that you only get one life. You need to be grateful and have those moments of unplugging and being appreciative of all that life has to offer. It's all about trying to live every day to the fullest, even if you're in a pandemic and you're stuck in your apartment. Frida suffered many miscarriages during her life. How did this impact her world and her art? When we think about Frida’s heartbreak and her pain, we often think about her relationship with Diego, but the fact that she wasn't able to become a mother was definitely another area of her life that caused a lot of pain and heartbreak and that came out in her art. I find her most moving works depict when she lost a child or are nods to her wishing that she could be a mother or her tapping into her maternal side.