I was in Lowe’s over the weekend to pick up a couple of tomato plants to replace fallen volunteers from last year’s garden when I saw this, one of several such displays:
“Oh,” I said aloud, facetiously (for the drive-bys who read in pictures) to no one and everyone in particular. “I guess gays only get to buy impatiens.” How does Lowe’s even go about the business of choosing which plants get rainbow’d and which do not?
I had forgotten that it was “Pride”month, or the month when every company and product in America clothes itself in rainbows to get a share of earned media and affirm how two adults choose to have sex. We were told that this particular choice of how people was private but now, in order to show they’re not members of the Ugandan government, companies must affirm this private choice immediately by slapping a rainbow onesie on your baby (gotta raise up that ESG score).
Or affirm it with the perennials’s plastic throwaway pots.
I asked on Twitter, my first mistake, if putting rainbows on disposable plant pots for marketing was “overkill.” A few drooling members of the BUT ACKSHULLY brigade, the wannabe contrarians who make straw man pronouncements based on literally nothing at all said in the tweet to which they’re responding, wanted to know why I hated the pots, or something equally illiterate instead of addressing whether or not the overkill made it all cringe. Deflect, always!
Back to the story.
It does seem like overkill because it is. It’s a disposable plant pot, for crying out loud.
Fallen soldiers get a day, with some companies hold coinciding sales periods (always has seemed sort of advantageous to me), but if you choose to have intercourse with someone bearing the same bits as you — or if you identify as whatever the other letters in LGBTQIABBQ mean — then you get a whole entire month. Granted, it’s not a month-long national “holiday,” but it is a month that seemingly takes up more space than fallen soldiers are ever allotted within cultural psyche.
Because of sex.
At least Lowe’s just had plastic pot displays and isn’t selling “tuck” swimwear to preteens. (“Give it time,” whispers bad Kermit.)
But it’s still overkill. Must every single product sold affirm how adults choose to have sex? Will someone be unable to cope with life unless Burger King affirms their personal choices with rainbow day burgers?
It’s been done with a sandwich. A literal sandwich.
Hard to top the burrito, I guess:
The sayings are all nonsense word salad.
Does it become cringe at some point when, say, mouthwash goes rainbow?
It’s the marketing version of pathological altruism. It’s not helping any movement, it cheapens it. How Machiavellian.
I see they were showing the company pride. That great for them. If that something a Gay or Lesbian wants to buy have at it. Capitalism at it best. I have issue when they market thing to kids of any age. Like Targets poor choices to put the clothing in kids section, or the other pride wear that had writing on it that well shouldn't be.
Your not wrong. I love this rant Dana. Truly.