Why Does It Feel Like Fashion Can’t Be Proud of Its Pride?
- Oops!Something went wrong.Please try again later.
There’s been talk of progress. There’s been praise of LGBTQ inclusion. Red carpets have even seen more men step out of suits and into skirts and other styling details that had traditionally been reserved for women.
Then 2023 hit in all its regressive glory and things are certainly not the same.
More from WWD
In the last few months alone, brands attempting to embrace the flow of progress and show support for othered individuals and the liberty to dress without outmoded gender rules have found themselves in hot water. The current American climate — one that has seen Roe v. Wade overturned, book bans, attempted drag bans and rising anti-LGBTQ laws, and all just within the past year — has cultivated a more vocal crop of dissenters who haven’t been here for any of it.
Probably the highest profile incident of late happened outside of fashion when Budweiser parent Anheuser-Busch partnered with Dylan Mulvaney, an actress and activist who has been public about her recent transgender journey. The link with the brewing company saw Mulvaney, in a look giving Audrey Hepburn vibes, post a video on April 1 drinking Bud Light and noting, among other things, that in celebration of her “day 365 of womanhood,” Budweiser had sent her a can of beer with her face on it.
Since then, a slew of conservative citizens and other offended parties have called for boycotts of the beer, some going as far as shooting up and vandalizing cans and store displays in social media videos. Anheuser-Busch stock has declined roughly 17 percent since the video and estimates peg the market value hit at $25 billion. A statement from company chief executive officer Brendan Whitworth that said little more than, “We never intended to be part of a discussion that divides people,” saw LGBTQ supporting organizations calling it a missed opportunity for Anheuser-Busch to defend Mulvaney and the transgender community.
In other Mulvaney news, a recent Nike tie-up that saw the influencer marketing one of its sports bras in a video drew backlash and comments on Instagram like: “So many great female athletes in the world and Nike chooses a man. If you support this you are NOT a feminist. This movement is erasing real women and womens [stet] sports.”
Anthropologie had its own video that went viral in May featuring male ballet dancer Harper Watters modeling its women’s clothing collection. As is typically the case, some were pleased at the progressive move while the naysayers were naysaying.
While nearly anything on social media can spark some negativity, it’s the earnest efforts to discredit brands and boycott their stores and products that have really ramped up.
Target has faced it recently, too, when its May release of “tuck friendly” swimwear and styles with extra crotch coverage drew ire the company said threatened the safety of its employees. Some Target stores in Utah reportedly received bomb threats over the issue. That made the retailer remove the merchandise from some of its stores, and made pro-Pride organizations call on Target to stand its ground and speak out against “anti-LGBTQ extremism.”
Kohl’s also took heat in May for its Pride collection, particularly the children’s items, including a onesie featuring people holding a Pride flag. A Twitter account with the handle @endwokeness tweeted a screenshot of the items on Kohl’s website and a comment that said: “Stop giving these people your money.”
Needless to say, the climate hasn’t been friendly to LGBTQ inclusion. In fact, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security issued a bulletin on May 23 warning of the “continued heightened threat environment” in the U.S. and noting that the LGBTQ community, among others, are “likely targets of potential violence.”
It’s a trying time for the community to say the least.
“This has been absolutely alarming this year for our community. There is no doubt that our community is under attack like I haven’t seen since the ‘80s,” Stacy Lentz, chief executive officer of the Stonewall Inn Gives Back initiative, and co-owner of Stonewall Inn, told WWD. “It feels like very organized attacking, by the way. I’ve seen that happen online a lot to brands, I’ve seen that happen online to our own nonprofit, to other LGBTQ nonprofits where hundreds if not thousands of folks that don’t even follow them will come in for the day with just horrible, vile statements and calling us everything under the sun.
“And then if a brand even puts up a Pride flag or something as innocent as that, we’re seeing them be attacked. And I mean, it’s very plotted and nefarious. And we haven’t seen that in the past years. We haven’t seen that in a very long time.”
Maybe, she said, it’s the “far, far, far right” feeling “emboldened because of what’s happening in politics, but either way, the community is getting unfairly caught in the fray.”
“Somehow in the culture war, we the LGBTQ community are being fed as red meat to the right-wing conservative base and that’s what’s happening,” Lentz said. “We’re seeing the polarization of our country but I’ve never seen as much hate in my almost three decades of being an activist. So, it’s terrifying.”
Despite the treacherous terrain, it’s necessary for brands to remain on the side of support and inclusion rather than backpedal under pressure.
According to The Trevor Project, a nonprofit focused on suicide prevention in the LGBTQ community, more than half of LGBTQ youth told the organization that brands who support the community positively impact how they feel about being LGBTQ. What’s more, those who reported having “an LGBTQ-affirming” workplace had 13 percent lower odds of reporting a suicide attempt in the past year.
While it may seem like brands are suddenly under new pressure to quell their support for Pride, Sofi Goode said it’s not coming out of nowhere.
“The LGBTQ community has made really amazing progress in the past decades and that has led to increased visibility and conversation about the community, and that success is being met with really intense backlash, particularly around our transgender and nonbinary members of the community,” the senior manager of corporate partnerships at The Trevor Project said. “Over the past couple of years, we’ve seen that increasing public vitriol; we’ve also seen increasing legislation moving forward targeting the LGBTQ community — and particularly transgender and nonbinary folks — and really looking at a concerted attempt to exacerbate bullying, increase social isolation and increase discrimination. And we see that happening at the statewide level all across the country, we see it happening in the culture and I think that context is super important because the backlash we’re seeing against corporations right now is not coming out of nowhere, it’s coming out of that.”
What most can agree on, regardless of any personal stance on the issue, is that big companies have a lot of power, particularly fashion companies as they cater to everyone who wears clothes. But it’s how they wield that power that has become a divisive issue.
“[Companies] have power to shift the conversation and really demonstrate meaningful inclusion,” Goode said. “And so we see what’s happening now as a concerted effort to target that power that corporations have and make it very difficult for them to show up for the LGBTQ community in ways that they might want to and in ways that we know can make a real difference if we think about long-term inclusion.”
With its own corporate partners, The Trevor Project is working to make sure they have the tools and context necessary to run Pride campaigns that are “supportive and affirming” and that land well with their consumers.
“We really want to make sure that our partners know that this is a tiny minority [those spewing the recent vitriol] and the vast majority of Americans, including their consumers and their workforce, want to see them showing up for LGBTQ communities during Pride month and beyond,” Goode said. “This is so much bigger than Pride and, really, they are kind of experiencing some of the backlash that the LGBTQ community is facing every single day.”
Putting data to that point, GLAAD’s recent Accelerating Acceptance study released at the start of June found that 70 percent of non-LGBTQ Americans agree that companies should publicly support the LGBTQ community through advertising and sponsorships — exactly what Budweiser, Nike and others were doing. The study also found that non-LGBTQ adults who are exposed to the community in media are 30 percent more likely to feel familiar with LGBTQ people overall, compared to those who haven’t been exposed.
“It’s just crazy to me in 2023 that someone’s throwing a fit about diversity, equity and inclusion,” Stonewall’s Lentz said. “First of all, it’s good for business, number one. And Gen Z will not buy from a company, whether it’s fashion, whether it’s food, whether it’s travel — they’re raised a lot differently and they will not purchase as a consumer from folks who aren’t on the side of equality.”
The younger generation, she continued, is pushing for change, pushing for the acknowledgement that “gender is a social construct” and that people should be able to wear whatever they feel comfortable in without any backlash or grand public discussion about it.
“Brands, if they’re smart, will market to that and understand,” Lentz said. “I think it’s just this really vast divide that we’re seeing across generations, across organizations and, sadly, across political parties when [who we love and who we are as people] should not be political. It’s a human rights issue. It’s not a political issue.”
Best of WWD
