Is the Commercialization of Pride Month Terrible, or Just Annoying?

(Get ready for your boy Hank here to ramble a bit.)

Hey there. Older gay dude here with a couple opinions about Pride As Commodity.

June is coming, and it looks a little something like this:

Okay maybe the above meme is a bit hyperbolic. It implies there's somethings actually life-threatening to the fact that Pride Month in general has been increasingly overtaken by our consumer overlords. I don't think we're to that point...yet, although the teen punk rocker who lives in my body still bristles at the thought that Burger King thought "The Proud Whopper" was a great idea. Hey, I'll eat a Whopper. Lord knows I've had a whopper or two in my mouth (cue Quagmire's giggety.) I'll shove that grease burger down my gullet and feel no shame doing it. But out of a sense of Pride? That's a stretch. If I'm implored to do it in the name of LGBTQ+ resistance and advancement, well...go fuck yourself.

Lots of interesting and provocative articles have come out in the last few years regarding this subject, by better writers than I. So I turned to them whist pondering this topic. Alex Abad-Santos over at Vox wrote a more dire piece bemoaning the expansive manner in which companies have pandered to my community in the name of inclusion, raking in the bucks while often not giving very much back. Sure, companies can say they "support" queer folks, but when that support is in imagery only to rebrand themselves, if at least for a ONE! WHOLE! MONTH!, claiming to "give X percentage back to LGBTQ+ causes," those percentages vary widely, if any money returns to the community at all. Last December, Ranker had a list of "companies that promote gay-friendly ideals." Whatever that means.

'Promote gay friendly ideals" can run the spectrum from the aforementioned Whopper, to those companies that actually give substantial monetary, political, and emotional support. Like Levi Strauss, who has lead the way for decades in how a company shows it's LGBTQ+ workers and community support. According to this piece at Attitude.co.uk, in 1982, former chief executive Bob Haas passed out leaflets alongside gay employees in San Francisco about a disease affecting his gay employees and the people of SF. They were the first corporation (in '92) to provide domestic partnership benefits to employees and came out publicly and legally in 2008 in support of gay marriage in California. Or like Martha Stewart, who featured alongside two other couples, a male couple in her winter 2010 wedding issue, wherein Jeremy Hooper, one of the men in that couple, says the best part of the feature was that there was no mention of it being a same sex wedding.

And that's what I ultimately want! Include us in your ads without trumpeting and heralding that we're gay! Don't make "gay" the point. Because when you, Mr. and Ms. Business Person, call that attention to our sexuality, you're really just pushing us out front while you hold your big sign with your name all over behind and above us to make you look great. And that looks pretty much literally like this:

H&M only donated 10% of its "Pride Out Loud" collection to community causes.

Unfortunately we can wind up praising and giving money to a company for their "support" here while ignoring their relationship with anti-LGBTQ+ people elsewhere. Case in point as pointed out in that Vox piece, Adidas loves to sell us their "pride pack" of ugly merchandise but was also a major sponsor of the World Cup in Russia a few years ago, a country with horrific, egregious, and deadly anti-gay policies!!! How many companies, like H&M, claim support but have plants in China, another super anti-gay country? (OMG, if I Google whether Levi's has plants in China and it turns out they do, I'm gonna be piiiiiiiisssssed!)

It's difficult to detach from the money. We want the big party because it's fun and there's safety in numbers. But I remember decades ago being at one of my last big parades in Chicago and there amongst the politicians and party kids was a gigantic drivable shopping cart advertising local grocery chain Jewel-Osco, and I thought "Oh, well...there we go now." Admittedly there's an uncomfortable relationship that occurs naturally with acceptance. All this corporate attention means that we've made progress. Decades ago it was unheard of for large companies to advertise specifically to the queers. I remember seeing some early advertising aimed at me (Subaru for one) and thinking "Wow, that's kinda cool." Which of course is in direct opposition to my reaction at that giant shopping cart. Maybe I want their monetary support; I just don't wanna see them at my parade. An impossibility, I know. And years ago, the amount of corporations participating in and ranking high on HRC's Corporate Quality Index never reached near what it is in their latest ranking. So yeah, there're forms of progress that have allowed us the privilege of leaning into the party and away from the politics of Pride. But recognize that privilege for what it is, where it can lead, and where it came from. (cough cough Stonewall cough cough

Writing a check, buying a piece of clothing, or choosing Absolute over another brand because you are dazzled by the rainbow is what's been deemed "slacktivism." It's easy to do, you or your allies feel good about your apparent awareness, and you get a cute top. Richard Morrison at the Federation for Economic Education, writing that the commercialization of Pride isn't that bad a thing,  states that "One of the great advantages of consumer culture is that there is profit in meeting the needs of consumers, regardless of whether the buyer and seller know or like each other. It is precisely the impersonal nature of the transaction that makes it easier for all of us to acquire the necessities (and luxuries) of life without having to interrogate the conscience of every shop owner, sales clerk, and swap meet vendor." And I would argue that Mr. Morrison is woefully ignorant (ignorantly privileged?) in this assessment. Thanks to the internet, Twitter wokeness and cancel culture, there is no impersonal transaction any more!

"This is the problem with commodifying 'awareness': While it may serve to raise money for a charitable cause, there’s no guarantee that money will result in any sort of tangible outcome. It’s nominal activism divorced from real action."-Alex Abad-Santos. Enjoy the party, and volunteer at a gay homeless shelter. Dance your ass off...after driving miles out of your way to support the meager attempt at a pride rally in a small town. Raise a drink in your cute top...at the celebration of the local politician you helped get elected who will work for change for your community.

(Gotta give a shout out to my buddy D Robert Bubba for that They Live meme with the phrase "June is coming.")