Pride & Prejudice

Is it better to be ignored, or to be recognized...poorly?

Let me just start by saying that I love Danessa Myricks Beauty. Some of their products have missed the mark for me, but most of them have been amazing quality, and she makes beautiful, impactful shimmers like nobody's business. This is not about her products. This is about her attempts at recognizing Pride.

My issue started a few years ago when DM Beauty put together a random assortment of already existing products and labeled it as a Pride bundle. This happened to be the same year that Morphe put out one of their Pride collections that included a brand new palette specifically themed around Pride as well as a few other items like brushes, maybe a makeup bag. I don't remember the specific items, and that's not really the point. What matters is that they made brand new items and a portion of the proceeds was being donated to a charity - I think the Trevor Project, but again I'm not 100% sure.

That year, the corner of makeup YouTube that I was following was really in a tizzy about the concept of "rainbow-washing" - companies slapping rainbows and Pride sayings onto products to make a quick buck. I have mixed feelings about this, because I remember a time when nobody was willing to put a rainbow on anything except for explicitly queer businesses, so I appreciate the representation. But some of it does feel a little gross. Anyway, all the makeup girlies were big mad about Morphe's collection and made video after video about how tacky they thought it was, and how big companies should do better.

Now Morphe at least made the effort to create brand new products, and they were making a donation to an LGBTQ+ charity. So what did these same makeup girlies have to say about Danessa's Pride bundle with no charitable donation?

Crickets.

That was a moment that really opened my eyes about how some creators operate. From my perspective, it wasn't about calling out rainbow-washing in the makeup space. That was just a convenient way for them to dunk on a brand they already didn't like, but tie it to something else so that it didn't seem petty. If they actually cared about rainbow-washing, then the Danessa Myricks bundle was objectively worse! Not only did she not create any new products, there was no mention anywhere that I could find that there was any kind of donation being made to any charity.

And then, last year, we got...whatever this was.

I did a whole video on this palette (and on this larger issue of rainbow-washing), but this is just...not it. The cover was gorgeous, and I love the representation of all the different kinds of Pride flags, but the inside was just a chaotic mess with nothing that felt terribly Pride to me. Yes, there is that one rectangle pan that has a sort-of rainbow in it, but it's missing one of the colors. If you know your queer history, then you know that each color of the Pride flag has a meaning. Leaving off one of the colors is leaving out part of that history of struggle and representation. The colors are also in the wrong order (that pinkish shade at the top is supposed to be the purple, I think?!) which as I talk about in the video is one of the ways that companies use a rainbow but mix it up to not get entangled in all that queerness.

Not only was the product questionable, but once again I scoured their social media and website and couldn't find any evidence of a donation. As I noted in the video, there is an article that I found that claimed that there was a donation made for the bundle, but I haven't been able to confirm that anywhere else except that article. I also haven't found anything about a donation for the palette.

And this year, there are shenanigans once again. Today I opened my email and found this (sorry, the image was weirdly long and skinny, so I had to capture it in two parts!):

No new products. No bundles of old products. Just another promotion of their most recent release with some inspiring words about Pride. And again, I'm not able to find any information about any kind of donation from this product or any other.

To me, this makes the phrasing, "Pride isn't a moment. It's a movement..." even worse because they are using the image and idea of Pride as a movement to sell their most recent product, without giving anything concrete to the movement itself. It's giving very, "Hi Gay!" energy.

And again, I love what Danessa Myricks Beauty is building in the makeup world. I want to root for her to be successful, and I am still buying her products. I even appreciate that she is making the effort to recognize Pride and make a statement about inclusion, especially this year.

But I've said it before, and I will keep saying it: allyship is not a participation trophy.

If you're going to use Pride to try to make money off of me and my community, then what are you doing for that community? Because some nice words in an email are not enough. And I think we are past the point where belonging to a marginalized group excuses you from exploiting or mistreating some other marginalized group, no matter how well-intentioned your efforts may be.

And look, Danessa Myricks is hardly the worst offender of this. Have you seen all of the TikToks and posts about Target's new pride collection? They are losing millions of dollars due to boycotts because of their rollback of DEI policies and programs, and that boycott is being driven by people of color and queer folks. Now they not only have the audacity to launch a new Pride collection, but they put so little thought into it that the tags still have the placeholder text on them! I mean, have you seen a company more fully misunderstand their core customer base in your life?

While I appreciate that Danessa Myricks is making more of an effort than that Target Pride mess, I still can't help but feel like what she is doing is exploitative. And I think I'm irritated by it because no one else seems to be irritated by it. People who loudly trash collections of new products that are raising money for charity have zero to say about this. And there are plenty of brands who don't recognize or celebrate Pride at all.

So I guess the question I have to grapple with is whether it is better to be ignored entirely, or represented poorly?

In the case of Target, I would say don't bother. No one needs this from you. If you want to turn things around you need to get back to what you claimed for years were your "core values" of diversity and inclusion.

But for Danessa Myricks, I do think that these missteps are better than just not doing anything at all. Because if you look at her brand as a whole, she does present a commitment to inclusivity and diversity in what she puts out into the world. She does genuinely seem to care about representing queer people, and wishing them safer, happier spaces in which to exist. It's just that so far, it doesn't seem like these wishes are being followed up with concrete actions.

That's not worthy of cancellation, by any means. I think maybe this is what the youths would refer to as "calling in" instead of "calling out?" I'm definitely saying, "Do better!" But I'm not turning my back and saying you have to figure that out on your own. There are times where I think we need to draw a hard line, and there are times when I think we can talk some truth while still giving some grace.