It’s June! Which means it’s time for egregious pandering to LGBTQ+ consumers

L ast Thursday, Ihop tweeted out what may be the most half-hearted appeal to queer liberation in the history of corporate America. “S/O to everyone who puts the pan in pancakes. Happy Pride!” it read, with the rainbow-flag emoji dutifully appended. While the blue-roofed chain’s messaging was inoffensive to the core, its limp determination to avoid controversy or stir human emotion felt rote – plus Ihop’s very next tweet was an ode to its new “Extra Normal Meal” specifically aimed at people who want to feel more ordinary.

International House of Xtravaganza, it ain’t.

Pride month is a season of extra-cringe pandering, when algorithms and advertising pitch decks unveil rainbow versions of everything from Nike swooshes to Listerine, Whopper wrappers to Lil Nas X M&Ms –– or, in Skittles’ case, a bag of bleached and vaguely pharmaceutical candies because Mars deems the month suitable for tasting one and only one rainbow. Offer some to your straight friends before they go extinct.

Known as “pinkwashing”, this annual phenomenon elevates a crass kind of money-grubbing identity politics. Granted, it’s a measure of undeniable social progress, even if equality’s seams are showing. But if you were picked on for being different growing up, impulse-buying a trans flag at Kohl’s can give you a kind of vertigo.

At the same time, the sheer laziness of it all can give rise to a worse feeling: the suspicion that no actual LGBTQ+ people were involved in any phase of a temporary campaign refresh. With the caveat that some queers’ griping can come off like those devout Christians who throw a fit each December because Starbucks’ holiday cups are too secular, we present this year’s most baffling and egregious examples.

The worst thing a brand can possibly do during Pride Month is forget that 40% of the US still wants queer educators fired, conversion therapy back in the DSM-V, and trans people snuffed out entirely. And if you do tweet out something that seems innocuous but is actually very poorly thought out, the dumbest move is to delete it after Libs of TikTok or some other extreme online troll comes for you.

That’s what the already cheekily named Every Man Jack did with its “Groom With Pride” ad on 1 June. The men’s skincare company was apparently unaware that baseless accusations of “grooming” underpin all the “don’t say gay” legislation that threatens to undo decades of progress. Read the room, Jack.

Like queer culture itself, waste management in the tri-state area undeniably has a seamy underworld. But some cultural juxtapositions seem almost as jarring as Donald Trump’s cameo in Home Alone 2, such as the New York City sanitation department tweeting out a “happy Pride” with no context whatsoever.

Are #NewYorksStrongest fighting for lesbian garbagewomen? Has this vital but underappreciated city service been a quiet hotbed of equality all along? The rainbow background on the department’s logo may not even be the weirdest visual element, either, as there’s a caduceus with two snakes curling around a staff, too. Maybe expressions of solidarity just come naturally to a highly unionized workforce like NYC’s garbage-hauling teamsters – but based on the muted reactions, the tweet appears to have gone kerplunk.

In which the US Marine Corps overcomes its hyper-masculine warrior origins to take a stand – even if there’s something visually discordant about fastening some lipstick-like bullets to your camo helmet.

Still, whatever your feelings about militarism and war, this is an about-face for an entity that has long been among the most homophobic institutions in America, as well as a step forward in acknowledging the intense homoeroticism of war, from gay-as-hell ancient Thebes to basically every poet in the trenches of the first world war. Hooah, gurl, hooah.

It’s been seven years since Chipotle tried to make “¿Homo Estas?” happen, earning widespread scorn for its clumsiness.

Now Taco Bell is attempting to hoover up the institution of the drag brunch with a five-city tour that pairs performers bearing dreadful names (Kay Sedia) with musty Donna Summer classics, hoary puns and annoying totems of yesteryear (branded Japanese fans) to titillate suburban teenagers.

Granted, performative food allyship goes way beyond glomming on to what began as an anti-police uprising led by Black trans women. (Remember when Pepsi solved racism?) But whatever lingering transgressive elements drag might retain diminish when yoked to Live Más Pride.

It’s not as though the electric-vehicle manufacturer was falling all over itself to support trans lives – Tesla’s Twitter feed is quite muted – but corporate hypocrisy is extra grating this time of year. The past few months have seen a ghoulish transformation of CEO Elon Musk from unorthodox billionaire who guest-voices on Rick and Morty into a genuine supervillain with a dubious grasp of free speech. The guy who dismissed hollow, flag-centric slacktivism (“I support the current thing”) and mocked pronouns also had the audacity to tweet about Tesla’s record on the Human Rights Campaign’s equality index.

Musk has legions of “weird nerd” fanboys hurling their bodies in front of him to protect their hero from even the most mild criticism, it’s true. But if we want to praise an unlikely hero for trying to do it right and take equity into consideration, take a look at Pop-Tarts.

In a Twitter thread, Kellogg’s Mylar-wrapped breakfast pastries make it clear they want to do the proverbial work: collaborating with the queer independent artist Thaddeus Coates to design their Pride Month boxes, donating $10,000 each to four Bipoc LGBTQ+ organizations, and giving away a further $100,000 in a partnership with the advocacy organization Glaad. Pop-Tarts don’t require refrigeration, because that’s pretty cool.