Gitcher sports bra on
Rubbing Our Noses In It chapter eleventy billion:
Transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney has secured another major partnership deal, days after Bud Light was criticized for partnering with her.
Mulvaney, an actor and comedian who has been documenting her transition across social media, is now a sports bra model for Nike.
Wait wait wait wait wait.
What is a sports bra? What is the whole point of a sports bra? Why is a sports bra necessary?
Because breasts, that’s why. Because breasts stick out from the body, and bounce if the body is in rapid motion, and that’s uncomfortable at best. Because breasts need support in the activities that make up sports.
Dylan Mulvaney doesn’t have breasts.
It’s just so fucking insulting, this kind of thing – deliberately insulting. “Haha ladies it pisses you off that we pay Dylan to model makeup and dresses? Ok we’ll ratchet it up: now it’s Tampax, and sports bras for his flat chest! Hahaha sucks to be you, Karen.”
As if I needed another reason to not buy Nike products.
Hitch your brand wagon to a star. Ain’t capitalism grand?
It’s not a boycott if you wouldn’t buy their products anyway. Claiming their products are crappy all of a sudden, that’s just sour grapes. “We’ll change our actions so that your number of reasons to avoid our products goes down by one” doesn’t sound like something any business would say.
The social media buzz (in my corner of the internet, at least) seems to be focusing on Mulvaney’s image on Bud Light cans, not on the sports bra ads. And, get this, they are talking about the “gay beer can”. Him being a gay man dressed in a feminine style on a beer can, that sounds perfectly fine to me; it’s the insistence that he is actually a woman that is a problem. And anyone can drink beer, but sports bras are for women. (I suppose some men with gynecomastia benefit from sports bras or something similar, but that doesn’t describe Mulvaney.)
I just saw another one where a complaint about his beer can image was mocked because the speaker was seen wearing “effeminate” clothing. Perhaps some people are complaining about a man in drag, but the issue is that he claims to be a woman. Nobody would ask Jim Bailey to model a sports bra.
Ru Paul apparently said he doesn’t impersonate women, no woman would dress like him, he dresses like a drag queen.
Sackbut @2 If you’re addressing my post @1, my reasons for not buying Nike products have always been about their marketing practices. This current marketing caper involving Mulvaney adds to that. Maybe Nike makes decent products, maybe they don’t, but I wouldn’t know either way. Like you say, it’s not a boycott.
twiliter, sorry, I misspoke, I don’t doubt you have plenty of legitimate reasons to avoid Nike. I have friends who decide to boycott a company for whatever reason, and suddenly they have tons of reasons that company’s products are no good, they’d never patronize that place anyway. I often wonder if the company’s many defects would magically disappear if they rescinded whatever bad action sparked this boycott.
Yes, I never say I’m boycotting WalMart, because I’m not. I simply choose not to shop there. I think the issue of “boycott” is often used because people will immediately give me twenty-seven reasons why I NEED to shop there, the one they assume is a shoo-in being “You need to support your students; they are working there”. Yes, but I see students working at both of the other grocery stores in town, the hardware stores, the bakeries, the restaurants…can I really give up ‘supporting’ those students to ‘support’ the other? It would be easier to say I’m boycotting WalMart because people would at least be somewhat sympathetic, but to choose not to shop at the most popular store? And the only department store remaining in town? Horror of horrors!
In spite of that, I don’t say I’m boycotting WalMart because it isn’t a boycott if you never shop there, and never intend to shop there.