Backlash Over Target’s Pride Month Bathing Suit Echoing Boycott of Bud Light

Target is reeling this Memorial Day weekend, with complaints over its Pride Month displays, especially its merchandising of a “tuck-friendly” bathing suit, ballooning into a marketing debacle on the heels of Bud Light’s recent ordeal regarding its promotion with a transgender influencer.On Friday, Target shares fell for the seventh day, hitting their lowest level in three years. The stock dip is “partially about earnings,” Barron’s reported, as the retailer warned of “softening sales trends” in the first quarter, and “partially about a decision to adjust its LGBTQ+ Pride Month collection.”With demonstrators around the country protesting at Target stores, some vandalizing their Pride Month displays, some right-leaning musicians are now getting into the act. The videos of activists confronting employees started on Wednesday. By Thursday, videos of activists vandalizing stores started popping up online. By Friday, the complaints over Target’s pride displays had entered a new phase, with activists pushing for a boycott similar to that against Bud Light.One rapper, known for his support of President Trump and described by Vice magazine as the “Mayor of MAGAville,” Forgiato Blow, released a video featuring himself and a small entourage riding through a Target store rapping, dancing, and railing against the retailer’s gay pride month marketing displays.“Attention all shoppers,” the rapper adlibs. “There is a cleanup in every aisle.”All week, Target has been pushing back at allegations on social media that it was selling to children a swimsuit designed for use by transgender women. A Target representative said the bathing suit and other Pride-friendly products were only sold to adults, in adult sizes. Activists later objected to the suits being on display in the vicinity of the children’s section. By mid-week, Target stores were moving some pride merchandise to the back of the stores due to employees reporting feeling unsafe.That move prompted pushback from gay rights groups who “chided the company,” the Associated Press reported, “for caving to anti-LGBTQ+ customers who tipped over displays and expressed outrage over gender-fluid bathing suits.”“Target should put the products back on the shelves and ensure their Pride displays are visible on the floors, not pushed into the proverbial closet,” the president of the Human Rights Campaign, Kelley Robinson, said. “That’s what the bullies want.”The current stage of the Target outrage echoes the recent (and ongoing) Bud Light turmoil following what was supposed to be a small, single promotion with transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney.As the Bud Light contretemps ballooned, activists began promoting conservative-owned breweries like Yuengling, and some conservatives opened their own premium priced breweries that sold American lager in the style of Bud Light.

Backlash Over Target’s Pride Month Bathing Suit Echoing Boycott of Bud Light

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