Target often carries irreverent articles of clothing in the young fashion department, it's where I got my silly but awesome space kitten leggings
If you hadn't guessed it already, these Target shirts are part of a collection aimed at brides and the bridal party. So on a hen-night, all the ladies may wear "team bride", or pick a shirt that they find funny and suits them such as "trophy", if they are one of the already married girlfriends. Target representative Molly Snyder sent the following statement to USA today to explain the collection.
“It is never our intention to offend anyone and we always appreciate receiving feedback from our guests. The shirt you’re describing is part of a collection of engagement and wedding shirts that are available in our women’s and plus size departments. The collection also included shirts that say 'Team Bride,' 'Mrs.' and 'Bride.' These shirts are intended as a fun wink and we have received an overwhelmingly positive response from our guests."
A few people are tweeting, and retweeting about the shirt and the news about the shirt has reached Time, Business Insider, and the Daily Mail where we found this explanation for the backlash. It's not just this shirt, it's the history of Target shirts.
However, Nicole Maiorana argued that the controversy has nothing to do with adult women buying and wearing the shirt.
'It's not really about whether she personally would buy it,' she explained: 'Target has a history of misogynistic merchandise aimed at children and young girls. We should be empowering young women, not glamorizing objectification. Where are the shirts that say "scholar" or "independent" or "I'm not an inanimate object that can be won"?'
For a company that promotes equal rights, you would expect @Target to refuse to sell a shirt that says "trophy" to young women.
— Sarah Grace |-/ (@MeetingSarah) May 25, 2015
The fact @Target has a a bridal shirt that says "Trophy" on it AND in the juniors section sickens me. How can that seem like a good idea?
— Katie (@comicsansislife) June 7, 2015
@Target under what circumstances should any human being wear a T-shirt that indicates that they are a "trophy" pic.twitter.com/NXIrg8wbvW
— Ashleigh (@AshleighReneee) June 14, 2015
Hey @target I'm in the men's section and don't see a Trophy shirt here why is that
— Amanda Nelson (@ImAmandaNelson) July 18, 2015
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Some people really need better hobbies. That's all I can add here without getting sweary.
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PermalinkTarget is exercising its freedom to sell products that not everyone likes. The petitioners are exercising their right to complain and exert consumer pressure. Unless the government is banning the products, freedom of speech and capitalism are functioning as they should.
I actually think it's useful for brands to hear this kind of feedback, whether you or I agree with it or not, because their proponents need to navigate an increasingly sensitive global market. As we've discussed before, choosing to give no fucks about "SJWs" can be part of a brand strategy, as can being reactive and apologetic. But either way, this is marketing now. Until we can target our niches without social media spillover, we have to deal with it.
That said, there is nothing new here. Conservative Christian groups have been petitioning and boycotting brands and media since we were kids. (There was even an episode of WKRP about it.) And in terms of more left-wing sensitivity, there are racist and sexist ads from that era that no sane person would ever dream of publishing now. Maybe in 30 years, these joke shirts will be unthinkably sexist. Maybe not. But regardless, these conversations are part of the environment.
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PermalinkUseful feedback is nice, the question is if this is useful to the company, or just noise. I'll also note that the articles talking about this massive online protest are showing tweets with only a handful of retweets, not hundreds.
There has always been people that will complain about an ad or a product, we used to call them the "little old ladies from Hastings" here, though they may not have been old, ladies, or even from Hastings.
I come from the most agnostic country in the world, where the protests are usually done by militant vegans or politically active youth, not "conservative christians" - but also where the protests can get violent with freeing animals or firebombing places, which is quite the step away from just signing a petition. There's been a lot of fashion protests here, centring on boycotting H&M and the likes for producing clothes in countries where garment workers work for very little money in dangerous conditions for too many hours. Not the design on the shirt.
So they're allowed to protest the shirt, and we're allowed to roll our eyes at them. Everybody is happy.
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PermalinkAgreed. Eye-rolling is a sign of sanity in angry times. :)
The current climate feels increasingly like the late '80s to me, a time when irony nearly died. There was no online mob then, but as a student I experienced it in the university press. The Barenaked Ladies, a Canadian band that went on to be quite successful, were banned from appearing on campus because their name was deemed "sexist" by a student group. Another band, The Phantoms, had their slot at an open-air concert on campus cancelled at the last minute because someone said they heard the band had a sexist lyric. (Nobody seemed to be able to say what it was.) My brother's band, The Pariahs, were hired as a replacement, and someone was there recording them (illegally) to try to gather evidence that they, too, were sexists.
I find misogyny abhorrent. But I try to fight it with empathy and humour rather than rage. When Action Bronson was similarly yanked from NXNE in Toronto this year, due to a problematic lyric, it reminded me of these days. Meanwhile, people want to hand the keys to their city to the Rollin Stones, one of whose greatest songs glorifies in racist terms rape of an enslaved woman on a antebellum plantation ("Brown Sugar").
Let's talk and roll our eyes together. Maybe we can find a better way to help people be better.
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