It wasn’t too long ago that if you wanted to buy Pride-themed merchandise, you had to seek out specialty shops that also sell fetish gear, sex toys, and porn on DVD. In 2019, the opposite is true; walk down most any street in New York City, where the largest turnout in Pride history is expected for this weekend’s 50th anniversary of Stonewall and World Pride, and try to avoid passing under the sweeping arches of rainbows everywhere, from banks to bodegas to straight bars.
Corporate America’s Pride mania has reached absurd new heights (healthy gums, anyone?), and been met in turn with no shortage of ambivalence and skepticism from the queer community. But even as we roll our eyes at Pride advertising campaigns everywhere, from cable and credit card companies to drug and clothing stores, many of us may pause to wonder if they have that rainbow-accented outfit in our size, or wonder how such ubiquitous visibility might have affected our own experience growing up and coming out.
Critiques from within the LGBTQ+ community of the commercialization of Pride are various, valid, and not exactly new. But as the corporatization of Pride reaches a fever pitch (and brands prepare to move on to new marketing strategies next month), the real danger lies in any assumption that commercial visibility equals victory in the movement for LGBTQ+ rights, and in losing sight of who’s been excluded from that equation all along.
“What we’re seeing in terms of corporatization and consumer influence is to a large degree a completely logical outcome of a gay rights movement that was predicated on a series of reforms — legal, judicial, and cultural — all [geared toward] acceptance,” says Michael Bronski, Professor of the Practice in Media and Activism in Studies of Women, Gender, and Sexuality at Harvard University. “Full citizenship in America has always been predicated on the ability to consume. So why would it be different for LGBTQ people?”
Recognition as a consumer base is a hallmark of minority progress in America. (Bronski cites the example of “lace curtain Irish” immigrants, who breached barriers to acceptance through buying power). The fact that the queer community and its allies have attained enough influence to warrant a flood of national campaigns is certainly a major milestone. Anti-LGBTQ+ opponents have been drowned out, and more significantly, their loss of business deemed worth it by companies touting rainbow promotions. Some brands have even shut down naysayers with value judgements that themselves have gone viral, as Axe did earlier this month.
