i miss being mad about corporate rainbowism
I will now give a slight rant on something I know a bit about from working in retail for nearly all my life (crying) and why corporate rainbowism is so slack this year, in my humble opinion.
Reason? PRODUCT. DESIGN. I can't tell you how many years we have had THE ugliest items for Pride. Who the hell wants to buy an ugly shirt or coffee mug to promote what should be a fun and uplifting event? Answer, no one.
It's hard to say if in my current retail job in particular (Kohl's) they went out of their way to design ugly ass crap to under sell or - more likely considering other products we sell - they're just THAT bad at designing desirable items, but boy, oh boy - were our Pride items last year ugly. The year before that too. Same with African American History month and anything else diverse.
Year after year of ugly, UGLY merchandise that no one bought so this year they made and distributed zip - at least to the stores. And I'm sure they pointed to the decline of previous years sales but???
NO capitalism works if you make shit product no one wants. If they had made GOOD items with colorful and fun designs, I bet it would have done well. But, apparently, god forbid.
Look, I'm not necessarily trying to defend rainbow capitalism, I'm just saying that if you want to attract an audience and money - whether queer or not - make things people want to buy.
...ps, Kohl's isn't doing great as a company in general because of this. They're still catering to 60 and up customers (who are dying) and wondering why they're not turning a profit. So. There's that too. 🙄
