Katie Beth May (March 16, 1981 – February 4, 2016)
was an American
model
A model is an informative representation of an object, person or system. The term originally denoted the Plan_(drawing), plans of a building in late 16th-century English, and derived via French and Italian ultimately from Latin ''modulus'', a mea ...
and
businesswoman
A businessperson, businessman, or businesswoman is an individual who has founded, owns, or holds shares in (including as an angel investor) a private-sector company. A businessperson undertakes activities (commercial or industrial) for the ...
.
Dubbed "The Queen of
Snapchat
Snapchat is an American multimedia instant messaging app and service developed by Snap Inc., originally Snapchat Inc. One of the principal features of Snapchat is that pictures and messages are usually only available for a short time before the ...
",
May was known as a
social media
Social media are interactive media technologies that facilitate the creation and sharing of information, ideas, interests, and other forms of expression through virtual communities and networks. While challenges to the definition of ''social medi ...
star and
brand ambassador
A brand ambassador (sometimes also called a corporate ambassador) is a person engaged by an organization or company to represent its brand in a positive light, helping to increase brand awareness and sales. The brand ambassador is meant to embod ...
before her death from a chiropractically-induced
stroke
A stroke is a medical condition in which poor blood flow to the brain causes cell death. There are two main types of stroke: ischemic, due to lack of blood flow, and hemorrhagic, due to bleeding. Both cause parts of the brain to stop functionin ...
at age 34.
Early life and education
May was born in
Pittsburgh
Pittsburgh ( ) is a city in the Commonwealth (U.S. state), Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, United States, and the county seat of Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, Allegheny County. It is the most populous city in both Allegheny County and Wester ...
,
Pennsylvania
Pennsylvania (; ( Pennsylvania Dutch: )), officially the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, is a state spanning the Mid-Atlantic, Northeastern, Appalachian, and Great Lakes regions of the United States. It borders Delaware to its southeast, ...
, to Janet May and Joseph May,
both teachers.
She was the youngest of four, with two sisters and a brother.
May described her upbringing as "very traditional working-American", with a "real emphasis in my house on
education
Education is a purposeful activity directed at achieving certain aims, such as transmitting knowledge or fostering skills and character traits. These aims may include the development of understanding, rationality, kindness, and honesty. Va ...
, primarily
the arts
The arts are a very wide range of human practices of creative expression, storytelling and cultural participation. They encompass multiple diverse and plural modes of thinking, doing and being, in an extremely broad range of media. Both ...
and
history
History (derived ) is the systematic study and the documentation of the human activity. The time period of event before the History of writing#Inventions of writing, invention of writing systems is considered prehistory. "History" is an umbr ...
".
She grew up in suburban
Pleasant Hills, Pennsylvania
Pleasant Hills is a borough in Allegheny County, Pennsylvania. As of the 2020 census, the population was 8,504. Pleasant Hills is a suburb of Pittsburgh.
History
The borough was incorporated into Allegheny County in 1947.
Geography
Pleasant ...
and attended
Thomas Jefferson High School in
Jefferson Hills, where she was a
cheerleader
Cheerleading is an activity in which the participants (called cheerleaders) cheer for their team as a form of encouragement. It can range from chanting slogans to intense physical activity. It can be performed to motivate sports teams, to ente ...
.
From 1999 to 2003, May attended
Ohio University
Ohio University is a Public university, public research university in Athens, Ohio. The first university chartered by an Act of Congress and the first to be chartered in Ohio, the university was chartered in 1787 by the Congress of the Confeder ...
, where she earned a
Bachelor of Science
A Bachelor of Science (BS, BSc, SB, or ScB; from the Latin ') is a bachelor's degree awarded for programs that generally last three to five years.
The first university to admit a student to the degree of Bachelor of Science was the University of ...
degree in
retail merchandising
Retail is the sale of goods and services to consumers, in contrast to wholesaling, which is sale to business or institutional customers. A retailer purchases goods in large quantities from manufacturers, directly or through a wholesaler, and t ...
.
Career
In 2003, May, who had "dreams and wishes ... far from Pittsburgh"
moved to
Los Angeles
Los Angeles ( ; es, Los Ángeles, link=no , ), often referred to by its initials L.A., is the largest city in the state of California and the second most populous city in the United States after New York City, as well as one of the world' ...
. She worked in
public relations
Public relations (PR) is the practice of managing and disseminating information from an individual or an organization (such as a business, government agency, or a nonprofit organization) to the public in order to influence their perception. P ...
at
Dolce & Gabbana
Dolce & Gabbana (), also known by initials D&G, is an Italian luxury fashion house founded in 1985 in Legnano by Italian designers Domenico Dolce and Stefano Gabbana. The house specializes in ready-to-wear, handbags, accessories, and cosmetic ...
prior to launching
high-end
In economics, a luxury good (or upmarket good) is a good for which demand increases more than what is proportional as income rises, so that expenditures on the good become a greater proportion of overall spending. Luxury goods are in contrast to n ...
denim
Denim is a sturdy cotton warp-faced textile in which the weft passes under two or more warp threads. This twill weaving produces a diagonal ribbing that distinguishes it from cotton duck. While a denim predecessor known as dungaree has been pr ...
line SINR Denim with boyfriend Alex Maimon.
May then "broke out on her own",
co-founding May-Levy PR and Marketing, which operated from 2008 to 2012.
Subsequently, she served as vice president of strategic marketing at Gen Arts, an arts incubator based in Los Angeles. Per May, "Then that company was sold and I was unemployed without a penny to my name."
In 2014, a
photo shoot
A photo shoot is the process taken by creatives and models that results in a visual objective being obtained. An example is a Model (person), model posing for a photographer at a studio or an outdoor location.
A photo shoot is a series of images ...
featuring May caught the attention of online
magazine
A magazine is a periodical publication, generally published on a regular schedule (often weekly or monthly), containing a variety of content. They are generally financed by advertising, purchase price, prepaid subscriptions, or by a combinatio ...
''Arsenic'';
subsequent shoots published by the magazine
went viral
Viral phenomena or viral sensation are objects or patterns that are able to replicate themselves or convert other objects into copies of themselves when these objects are exposed to them. Analogous to the way in which viruses propagate, the ter ...
.
Less than two years later, May, at the age of 34, had amassed nearly two million
Instagram
Instagram is a photo and video sharing social networking service owned by American company Meta Platforms. The app allows users to upload media that can be edited with filters and organized by hashtags and geographical tagging. Posts can ...
followers
and had been named "The Queen of Snapchat".
In addition, May had modeled for such
mainstream publications as ''
Sports Illustrated
''Sports Illustrated'' (''SI'') is an American sports magazine first published in August 1954. Founded by Stuart Scheftel, it was the first magazine with circulation over one million to win the National Magazine Award for General Excellence twic ...
'', ''
GQ'', and ''
Playboy
''Playboy'' is an American men's lifestyle and entertainment magazine, formerly in print and currently online. It was founded in Chicago in 1953, by Hugh Hefner and his associates, and funded in part by a $1,000 loan from Hefner's mother.
K ...
'',
and had acted as model for
sports betting
Sports betting is the activity of predicting sports results and placing a wager on the outcome. The frequency of sports bet upon varies by culture, with the vast majority of bets being placed on association football, American football, basket ...
company JetBet, with which she partnered. Said May, "I am letting my fans see the sexy campaign and billboards while at the same time letting them know that I'm an active and vocal part of the company."
Personal life
May was a single mother.
She cited her daughter as her source of motivation: "I had the most important person in my world, my daughter, to make proud each day and to remind me what I was working towards. Failure was not an option, not putting her in the best school was not an option, not living the lifestyle that I had dreamed of for us was not an option," she told
Huffington Post
''HuffPost'' (formerly ''The Huffington Post'' until 2017 and sometimes abbreviated ''HuffPo'') is an American progressive news website, with localized and international editions. The site offers news, satire, blogs, and original content, and ...
in 2016.
Death
May
tweeted
Twitter is an online social media and social networking service owned and operated by American company Twitter, Inc., on which users post and interact with 280-character-long messages known as "tweets". Registered users can post, like, and ...
on January 29, 2016 that she had pinched a nerve in her neck on a photoshoot and "got adjusted" at a
chiropractor
Chiropractic is a form of alternative medicine concerned with the diagnosis, treatment and prevention of mechanical disorders of the musculoskeletal system, especially of the spine. It has esoteric origins and is based on several pseudoscie ...
. She tweeted on January 31, 2016 that she was "going back to the chiropractor tomorrow."
On the evening of February 1, 2016, May "had begun feeling numbness in a hand and dizzy", and "called her parents to tell them she thought she was going to pass out." At her family's urging, May went to
Cedars Sinai Hospital
Cedars-Sinai Medical Center is a nonprofit, tertiary, 886-bed teaching hospital and multi-specialty academic health science center located in Los Angeles, California. Part of the Cedars-Sinai Health System, the hospital employs a staff of over 2 ...
;
she was found to be suffering a "massive
stroke
A stroke is a medical condition in which poor blood flow to the brain causes cell death. There are two main types of stroke: ischemic, due to lack of blood flow, and hemorrhagic, due to bleeding. Both cause parts of the brain to stop functionin ...
."
According to her father, May "was not conscious when we got to finally see her the next day. We never got to talk to her again." Life support was withdrawn on February 4, 2016.
A
coroner
A coroner is a government or judicial official who is empowered to conduct or order an inquest into Manner of death, the manner or cause of death, and to investigate or confirm the identity of an unknown person who has been found dead within th ...
's report confirmed that the stroke was the result of the chiropractor's neck adjustment, which tore her left
vertebral artery
The vertebral arteries are major arteries
An artery (plural arteries) () is a blood vessel in humans and most animals that takes blood away from the heart to one or more parts of the body (tissues, lungs, brain etc.). Most arteries carry o ...
. The coroner's office ruled it an accident. In 2017, a lawsuit, which included claims of wrongful death and professional negligence, was filed against the chiropractor by May's father in Los Angeles Superior Court. The case was settled in January 2022 for $250,000 without acknowledgement of any wrongdoing.
References
External links
"Katie May Forever" stroke awareness page
{{DEFAULTSORT:May, Katie
1981 births
2016 deaths
Accidental deaths in California
Businesspeople from Pittsburgh
Female models from Pittsburgh
Ohio University alumni
20th-century American businesspeople
20th-century American women
21st-century American women