Do we like them?

Do we like Sara Blakely?

Our score: 7 out of 10. A decent record with real money put behind women, and no harmful words found, but my reading of her was patchy because most pages wouldn't open.

Sara Blakely is the woman behind Spanx, the shapewear label she started with $5,000 of her own savings. It grew into a billion-dollar business, and she became one of the best-known self-made women in American business.

The big business moment came in October 2021, when Blackstone bought a majority stake in Spanx. She told CNBC she would keep a significant stake and become executive chairwoman, and said Spanx would expand into denim and other clothing. On the product she had this to say: “shapewear is really easy to make, and really hard to get right.”

The nearest thing to a stoush in the search results is a business fight, not a personal one. In 2013 Spanx started a court case against the maker of the rival Yummie Tummie line. The reporting I found doesn't say how it ended, and it was a dispute between companies, not about how she treated people.

On the harm test, I went looking for anything she has said or done against LGBTQ+ people, women, migrants or the planet, and for any slide into conspiracy theories. I found nothing. That isn't a glowing endorsement of her views, because she doesn't talk politics much in the sources I could read, but there's no harm on the record either.

The good stuff is the best part of her record. In 2016 she became the first woman to join the Giving Pledge, promising to give away half her fortune. In 2020 her foundation put $5 million into a fund giving $5,000 each to small women-owned businesses. When Blackstone's deal went through, she handed every employee $10,000 and two first-class plane tickets.

The fair caveat is that most of the pages I tried to open were blocked or rate-limited, so this rests on search summaries and one full article. Nothing recent and personal turned up either. If something big has landed lately, it isn't in what I could verify.