Last year, Target rolled out a Pride collection that was cautiously inconspicuous, trying to evade more faux outrage from the Konservative Karen Kabal.
This year, they’ve taken a different approach: aggressive indifference. The collection is so bad that you can’t chalk it up to apathy or laziness. Individually, the items are just pointless. Put them together, though, and it seems like a deliberate effort to demean, devalue, and disregard queer folks.
Target’s message: “Know your place and we’ll reward you a little bit of Pride.”
Now let me take you on the worst Target run in history …
Nowhere Over the Rainbow
The color scheme for most of this year’s Pride merchanise: muted, misleading, and easy to miss.
Anything that reads as queer is downplayed, and the colors are wrong—technically and tonally. Whoever designed these products has never seen an actual Pride flag.
Target wants us to think this is a feature, not a bug. They’re describing some products as “New Neutrals,” with the tagline “Make a statement, even in low-key hues.”1
Marketing on the Down Low
A lot of items in the 2025 connection are tenuously queer, with generic slogans and marginal connections to LGBTQ slogans and imagery.
If some of these products weren’t part of the Pride collection, no one would raise an eyebrow. The remaining products would just need a slight tweak or two to remove any semblance of gayness.
Target wants to play both sides:
- “Hey, LGBTQ customers, here’s your queer stuff. Stop complaining.”
- “Hey, bigots, this isn’t really queer stuff. Stop complaining.”
The Rainbow Deflection
OK, straight people, I’m sick and tired of telling you this: You can’t slap a Pride label on anything with a multicolored pattern. Stop it. It’s like saying that any flag with stars and stripes on it is American.
Well, That’s a Stretch
Like a poor student padding an essay, Target tossed in a bunch of unnecessary and irrelevant items to hide the fact that their collection was too short and lacked substance.
Not Sold in Stores
There are a few Pride-worthy items in the collection, but don’t expect to find them on your next Target run. Anything that hasn’t been muted or neutered can only be ordered online.
I mean, imagine the absolute terror of running out to pick up some shampoo and Oreos and seeing these:
A Few Hits Among the Many Misses
A few cool things actually made it past Target’s lack-of-quality controls!
Lesbians Are for the Birds—Oops, I Mean Birds Are for the Lesbians!
Target’s Gal and Pal bird figurines are a bright spot in an otherwise dreary Pride collection. They’re queer-coded and wink at a well-known, but stereotypical, joke about lesbians.2
Success for a Dress
It’s hard to combine all six colors of the traditional Pride flag and the pink, blue, and white of the Trans Pride flag and end up with something that’s not a garish, costumey nightmare.
Whoever designed this “Pride Adult Rainbow Midi Cutout Dress” understood the assignment—and crushed it. I think they should get raise but, knowing Target these days, they’ll probably get fired.
A Final Thought
Target let us down last year. They’re pushing us down this year. A few cute lesbian birds and serviceable mail-order T-shirts don’t make up for the sheer disaster of this year’s Pride collection.
This isn’t an example of a company missing the mark, like they did last year. This is what happens when a company isn’t even trying to aim for the target.
That’s not ironic. It’s just pathetic.
Footnotes
- I have a mental image of Target executives hovering behind the designers and merchandisers, forcing them to tone down everything. The executives are impersonating Andrea True and singing, “Less, less, less! No one should like it, no one should like it.” No, I have not been drinking. This is just how my brain works. ↩︎
- Here’s the joke and its backstory: What’s the Deal With U-Haul Lesbians? ↩︎