Over the last few years, Pride Month – annually celebrated in June – has come with ample rainbow graphics and performative advertising from recognizable brands. This has been particularly true in the beauty space where many brands have been born out of the platforms of charismatic queer entertainers such as Jonathan Van Ness (JVN Hair) and Trixie Mattel (Trixie Cosmetics).
Earlier this month, Popular Information reported on 25 major companies – including three of the beauty industry’s biggest retailers, Amazon, Walmart and CVS – that have donated at least $13.5m to anti-LGBTQ+ politicians since January 2022. That money was either donated by corporate Pacs to the campaigns of members of Congress that received a zero rating on the latest congressional scorecard produced by the Human Rights Campaign (HRC); to state legislators who sponsored anti-LGBTQ+ legislation in Florida, North Carolina, North Dakota, Tennessee and Texas; to the governors who signed anti-LGBTQ+ legislation into law in those states; and to the primary 527 organizations that support anti-LGBTQ+ state legislators and governors.
While many beauty brands publicly support and platform LGBTQ+ care, safety and success, many also distribute their products through these retailers. And given how much of the beauty industry claims to be allies with those in the LGBTQ+ community, what’s happening behind closed doors is radically different from what consumers are being signaled.
The beauty and culture critic Jessica DeFino recently wrote a piece on her newsletter Unpublishable explaining the affiliate relationship many beauty brands have with retailers or media brands, citing Amazon’s staggering 36% market share for beauty products. Digital publications such as Cosmopolitan, Refinery29 or the Cut make money through affiliate sales, linking and promoting products sold by Amazon, CVS and Walmart. Much of the profits from the beauty industry – no matter how rainbow-colored the presentation of its products are – funnel back to these huge retailers, who then help subsidize organizations aimed at dismantling queer rights and autonomy.
“Part of the mess that we’re in currently is that a lot of really well-intentioned brands market their products as some sort of liberation and that’s just not the material reality of how the beauty industry works as we can see with these donations,” DeFino said.
DeFino has written about the beauty industry extensively in an effort to dismantle beauty standards and debunk marketing myths. She also argued that if a brand is truly well-intentioned, “perhaps [they would have] more realistic marketing that doesn’t take advantage of citizens who have been failed by their politicians and let down by the government and exploit that powerlessness to generate sales.”
Angela Ubias, co-founder and CPO of Common Heir, a new clean beauty brand established in 2020 has a nuanced perspective as both a member of the LGBTQ+ community and the founder of an indie brand. She says her team is hyper-selective on who they choose to retail with, noting that Walmart, Amazon and CVS are not on that list. That said, she conceded that complete and total alignment with any retailer is a rarity.
“For indie brands – especially those that are founded and run by Bipoc and/or LGBTQ+ founders, allies and teams – partnering with a massive retailer like those mentioned can catapult your brand and mission to an entire population of consumers that you very likely could not have reached otherwise,” Ubias said.
Ubias additionally pointed to the prevalence of “rainbow washing”, a term referring to the performative allyship of some retail giants and major brands culling funds from marginalized communities. She underscored Target’s recent removal of some items from their 2,000-product Pride collection after receiving backlash from “conservative activists” advancing a theory that “woke” corporations are pushing radical, pro-LGBTQ+ agendas. The speed with which Target caved to conservative pressure was a slap in the face to some consumers’ idea of true “allyship”. (Target’s spokesperson cited “threats impacting our team members’ sense of safety and wellbeing while at work” when addressing the products’ removal.)
In this particular moment in which trans and queer rights are under severe threat (this pride month, lawmakers are considering more than 450 anti-LGBTQ+ bills in state houses across the country), it is crucial that brands put their money where their mouths are and stay consistent behind the curtain with the values they publicly tout.
While easier said than done, Ubias said that each “brand will have to answer for themselves whether or not leveraging a partnership like this has the potential for large-scale positive impact, inclusion and visibility for the LGBTQ+ community”.