This article is brought to PRINT readers by DIELINE, a leading authority on CPG, packaging, and branding. For more packaging insights and exclusive member content, visit thedieline.com.
Compared to many recent Junes, Pride 2024 feels deadly quiet.
While it felt like the writing was on the wall just last year, even previously rainbow-washed companies appear to be divesting from the annual celebration they were once eager to support. Brands were visibly intimidated after several campaigns became Fox News fixtures last spring, most notably Bud Light, who gave into right-wing pressure after their 2023 partnership with trans activist and social media star Dylan Mulvaney attracted a feverish boycott. It didn’t take long for critics to notice a drastic reduction in Pride merchandise across the board, with some brands even attempting to rewrite the narratives of rainbow merchandise in less explicitly queer directions.
Image via Target
This year, brands like Bud Light seem to be sticking to their 2023 pivots: according to Forbes, the beer giant’s social media hasn’t so much as mentioned Pride, and Nike— who also courted controversy for working with Mulvaney— quietly re-released last year’s collection. While there are still brands making rainbow merch, working with queer creative teams, and donating to organizations like GLAAD and The Trevor Project, current trends are too dire to see this as much more than low-hanging fruit.
Of course, this is troubling, especially in a high-stakes election year hot off the heels of near-constant legislative threats to the livelihood of queer (most often trans) communities. But queer activists and critics have spent years warning an increasingly supportive general populace that branding would never be enough to protect the community from the fascistic backlash the Trump years revealed is waiting in the wings. While even skeptical members of the LGBTQ community might’ve been able to find some solace in corporate support for Pride, those dollars haven’t translated into substantial or sustainable enough gains to keep up with mounting reactionary violence.
Image via Target (2024 Pride Collection)
One of last year’s Main Characters was Target, whose evolving relationship with the festival has served as something of a litmus test for the state of the growing backlash. Just a couple of years ago, the big box chain had fairly ambitious releases that involved mugs with Sappho quotes, tuck-friendly swimsuits, and, most notably, items that expressed explicit allyship with the trans community. But in 2023, stores pulled a significant amount of Pride-related items off shelves after not only becoming the subject of reactionary media but violent intimidation: several locations reported vandalism, hateful calls, and even bomb threats to stores that stocked Pride merchandise.
Following Bud Light’s moves, Target has made substantial cuts to this year’s Pride collection and even limited its releases to about half of its stores. While potential danger for employees could make it fair to say the backlash put Target in a difficult position, it’s never advisable to negotiate with terrorists.
Image via Target (2024 Pride Collection)
Recent comments from a significant number of artists and designers who were contracted for this year’s collection give the impression that Target wanted to have it both ways as well. In an interview with Xtra, illustrator En Tze Loh described watching the store waver dramatically on their agreement, making significant changes like shelving over two-thirds of their collection, removing credits due to “safety concerns,” and limiting the products to online-only sales. While the store may still be selling Pride merchandise, the “compromise” they reached was a pretty militant one, especially for a store that once sold shirts that said, “Trans people will always exist!” It could very easily be argued that Target’s reduced Pride line—like Bud Light and Nike—walks back explicit support of an increasingly threatened community. Loh told Xtra that “one of the alternate designs they had submitted—a T-shirt design featuring the phrase ‘I am valid’—would be used in place of designs they’d submitted with explicitly trans-affirming messages like ‘Protect trans lives’ and ‘Trans futures.’”
Target’s strategy has rightly been receiving a great deal of criticism, but isn’t without its defenders: in a recent comment to Forbes, GlobalData retail managing director Neil Saunders described the store’s middle ground approach as “the sensible choice.” Writer Pamela N. Danziger expresses distrust in critics of rainbow washing, arguing that “the more cynically-minded see it as just another way to monetize from the movement or to proclaim support without doing anything meaningful to advance the cause.” But it’s hard to imagine a crueler conclusion than where she ultimately lands— she agrees with Saunders, saying “no national retailer or brand of any size can afford to alienate significant segments of its customer base.” However, one could argue that business has never looked better for companies that were already doing well. Corporate profits have been at a record high for years, and the recent phenomenon of “greedflation” revealed this isn’t due to rising overhead but a desire to make more money.
Image via Target
Meanwhile, quality of life has plummeted for the vast majority of Americans, with poverty, hunger, disability, homelessness, and general precariousness becoming much more widespread in even previously affordable cities. Members of oppressed demographics tend to get hit harder by these downward trends, and the LGBTQ community was disproportionately affected by economic insecurity even before COVID moved more millions into the hands of the ultra-wealthy. Businesses comparatively don’t seem to have much to lose at this current moment, and even if they did, there would arguably be far fewer stakes for their continued survival than there are right now for living, breathing members of the LGBTQ community.
Target doesn’t seem to be suffering for abandoning a group they were once happy to patronize, and the fickle news cycle may have already moved on from covering the store’s regressive strategy. They’re instead making headlines for selling out of a Tippi Hedren-inspired plush bird that recently went viral on social media, an item from their Pride line whose “[online] description…does not immediately reveal its connection to queer culture.” Palpable outrage hasn’t seemed to translate into anything like a boycott or encouraged pivot away from Target, which doesn’t bode well for future collections from them or their corporate peers.
Image via Target (2021 Pride Collection)
The winner of this year’s election is likely to be a substantial determining factor in how future Junes will look for the LGBTQ community. A second Trump Presidency poses an immense threat to American democracy, but it’s hard to imagine much beyond the continuation of an unsustainable status quo if Biden wins. The situation for the LGBTQ community is already dire, yet there’s no sense of immediate alarm, even with their supposed defending party in control of the White House and Senate. When I stop to consider the rock and a hard place so much of America is caught in this year, I think again of Forbes’ Danziger calling critics of Pride branding “cynically-minded,” and I wonder if she doesn’t have something of a point, albeit not quite in the way she likely meant. It’s hard to feel optimistic after recalling how “better times” felt: a less terrifying period where the loudest public expressions of queerness were limited to respectable writing, bare minimum investment in queer creatives and causes, and massive corporate parade floats. As America sits in the midst of a dangerous threshold, there might not be a better time for groups in positions of power to really put their money where their mouths are. That makes it especially telling that instead of even turning to their default of virtue signaling, many brands are choosing to wash their hands of any involvement.
Image via Target (2022 Pride Collection)
If a brand like Target can still receive some form of kudos for continuing to acknowledge the LGBTQ community despite drastic divestment from a previously more robust message, it presents an especially damning read on the supposed heart beneath Pride branding. That might best be summarized by a quote from Xtra’s piece on Target pulled from Shanée Benjamin, an artist whose work was pulled from the store’s Pride collection. “I guess they wanted their messaging for Pride to be generic—’love is love,’ ‘be you,’ all that super quite frankly diminishing and useless slogan work that does not help or…push our community forward,” she said in a video on her Instagram. “That’s what they want— because they don’t give a flying fuck about gay people.”
While the revolution was never going to be branded, there are still plenty of worthwhile places for Pride revelers to spend their dollars, and it’s always a good time to give directly to queer creatives. In the meantime, those looking for a hero in this loaded, scary year would be wise to remember a slogan popular at the kinds of marches that inspired Pride in the first place: “We keep us safe.”