If there’s anything that woke companies should have learned in recent weeks, it’s that they need to understand their customers. Bud Light made the absurd decision to partner with Dylan Mulvaney, a mentally ill man who thinks he’s a woman and acts like a little girl.
Sure, he’s had plenty of woke corporations throwing money at him, hoping to tap into his ridiculously large fan base on TikTok, but the backlash after the Bud Light partnership was unlike anything we’d seen before. Demand for Bud Light plummeted, and soon afterward, all Anheuser-Busch products saw a decline, and the company’s market value decreased by more than $6 billion. In response to the backlash, the company attempted to minimize its association with Mulvaney and is now outright disavowing it.
It was a painful lesson for Bud Light, one that should have been a warning to other corporations that think they can insult their customers and get away with it.
Or so you thought.
This week, Anthropologie, a popular women’s fashion brand, decided that featuring a male model wearing women’s clothing in a recent campaign was a great idea. The brand shared a video on Instagram featuring a man with a shaved head trying on various women’s outfits while dancing. It’s disturbing to watch, but I’m going to share it with you anyway:
As you might expect, the video received significant criticism from its supporters. In fact, the backlash was so severe that Anthropologie had to disable comments on the video. Anthropologie may be less hurt by this than Bud Light, but I first learned about this by seeing people react to it on my Facebook feed, insisting, quite empathically, they would never shop at the store again.
We’ve been seeing several major brands use male models, some of whom identify as transgender, to promote women’s clothing and products — be they sports bras or beauty products. For sure, young, progressive marketing professionals think this is making their brand appear “inclusive” and all about “diversity,” but, as polls show, Americans aren’t buying what the transgender movement is selling.
Most Americans don’t believe that men can become women or vice versa. With that in mind, a brand will more likely alienate its customer base by embracing this transgender nonsense. When brands pander to the transgender cult, they are going to have to accept that they are going to shrink their customer base, not expand it.
Last month, Instagram star Bri Teresa ended her partnership with lingerie company Honey Birdette, a “luxury lingerie brand created for women, by women,” after they decided to share images of a male model, Jake DuPree, modeling their lingerie.
“Sad to see you guys jumping on the woke bandwagon!” she said at the time. “Once again, another thing taken over by men. Know your audience!”
This isn’t merely woke companies pushing a political agenda. These companies are aiding and abetting a dangerous movement that seeks to undermine our societal values.