Plenty of companies hoist the Pride flag in June, but not all do it out of allyship. They want to polish their image, sell rainbow-colored merchandise, and — even worse — distract us from their support of anti-gay organizations and politicians.
These superficial gestures are called pinkwashing. It’s a topic I haven’t addressed yet in Gayskool, but I will soon.
Instead, I’d like to talk about an alarming new trend that I’m calling pinkwishy-washing.1 This is when a company scales back its support for the LGBTQ community in the face of criticism from our enemies.
We’re here for you, they say, except when people are mad at us.
Two examples come to mind.
This is part of my Gayskool project:
A new LGBTQ-themed post every day for Pride month.
Bud Light
Last year, Bud Light backpedaled after a partnership with Dylan Mulvaney, a trans influencer, turned into a bigot-backed firestorm.
What kind of marketing campaign could cause so much ire? Super Bowl ads? Billboards on every corner? A huge trans flag on every bottle and can?
Nope.
They send Dylan some personalized cans of beer to celebrate the first anniversary of her transition. That’s all.
Bud Light’s response was to defend their bottom line, not to defend Mulvaney. That didn’t go over well. After losing support from the bigot community, they lost support from the LGBTQ community. Their parent company, Anheuser-Busch, was downgraded significantly in the Human Rights Campaign’s Corporate Equality Index.
Target
Target was also targeted (sorry) by the usual suspects last year. You’ve already seen how a single Instagram post triggered a huge ignorant outburst, so you can imagine the collective conservative convulsions over a major retailer promoting Pride merchandise in June.
Target responded by moving or removing some of its Pride displays and products. The company said it was to protect workers, but to many LGBTQ customers, this seemed like a convenient excuse for acquiescing to bigotry.
This year, Target has cut back its Pride offerings and won’t even sell the items in some stores. I live near two Targets, and you must hunt to find anything with a rainbow. That certainly wasn’t the case last year.
The Insidiousness of Pinkwishy-Washing
Both Bud Light and Target chose expedience over integrity when confronted by conservative extremists, and it didn’t turn out well for either of them. Spinelessness isn’t a long-term solution.
The true cost of pinkwishy-washing isn’t what shows up on balance sheets and in survey results. It’s the unfortunate and unforgivable message it sends. It’s the precedent it sets. And it’s the way a few companies cast doubt on the sincerity and strength of allies.
Carl Nassib, the retired NFL player who made history when he came out, has the best take I’ve seen on pinkwishy-washing. He recently told the Advocate:
These brands just have no grit to them. They see bad comments on their social feeds, and they just back off.
If they think the comments are bad for them, just imagine what kids are going through when they see it. And then the brands cave to the hate, and what message does that send to these kids?
They should see that hate still exists and there’s work to be done to fight that hate.
They should lean into the progress rather than go backwards, and they should stick to supporting our community in the long run.
Carl Nassib
Bravo, Carl.
Footnote
- Can I trademark this? ↩︎