It happens every year. The clock strikes midnight and it is now July 1st. Every big corporation is working tirelessly to un-rainbow their logos and take down their limited edition Pride merchandise from the shelves. Pride month is over, and the window to commercially exploit LGBTQIA+ consumers—who still only make $0.90 to every non-LGBTQ person's dollar—has closed.
Rainbow washing is the performative use of rainbow colors on logos, products and advertisements to appeal both to LGBTQIA+ consumers as well as signal to others that the company is progressive and “woke”. A core characteristic of this allyship is just how performative it is, which can be seen clearly by attending to the fact that this support and focus on the LGBTQIA+ community seldom (if ever) extends beyond Pride month.
To be blunt: acts of rainbow washing are nothing but superficial gestures intended to help a company gain a positive reputation without actually doing anything supportive or transformative for the LGBTQIA+ community. In the worst of cases, the companies that are rainbow-washing and capitalizing off queer people are themselves homophobic or donate these funds directly to homophobic institutions or campaigns. For instance, AT&T—who are known to fly the rainbow flag during June—donated $2,755,000 to 193 anti-gay politicians in 2017-2018. This practice—centering queer people in advertising campaigns during the month of June to then not only not use this money as donations to support LGBTQIA+ charities but instead a way that actively harms the community—is far from any kind of queer liberation.
The market is big. LGBTQIA+ adults are estimated to hold about $3.7 trillion in purchasing power. Increasingly, more people are highly influenced by a brand's reputation and values, especially as we continue to be fed the idea that we can have an influence as consumers. After all, full cultural citizenship in America has always been about the ability to (over)consume.
Almost 70% of gay consumers said that they would be positively influenced by ads containing LGBTQIA+ imagery. It is no surprise, then, that companies will play on the image of being an ally to the community in order to gain more loyal consumers—especially since the bar is so incredibly low that, really, they just need to pretend not to be openly homophobic or transphobic for a month. There is nothing directly unethical about targeting a consumer audience, but often times companies have done very little research and know very little about the needs and desires of these communities, as evidenced by the interchangeable choice of rainbow flag items. The choice to economically target an already economically marginalized group can definitely be brought into question, as well as the fact that this $3.7 trillion market could be serviced instead by LGBTQIA+ owned businesses who likely know their consumers better.
Year round, the spirit of Pride is a protest against the discrimination and oppression that is often an unavoidable part of the queer experience. Meanwhile, Pride also aims to center and celebrate the beauty of queerness and the variety of experiences across the community. This entire experience can simply not be reduced to a rainbow-colored product to be marketed off—and how can we say that everyone or even anyone in the LGBTQIA+ community really wants a rainbow-colored t-shirt? The community—like any other—is diverse, and rainbow washing can often lead to viewing and advertising to this community as if it were a monolith.
Rainbow washing during Pride Month is one of the more explicit ways in which companies commercialize the LGBTQIA+ experience through performative support. However, this practice can be seen beyond the month of June too. For instance, we can see rainbow washing in a company's tokenistic hiring practices, in which LGBTQIA+ employees might be hired primarily for a company to signal virtue. Hiring LGBTQIA+ employees allows a company to tick the diversity box without actually doing anything for genuine inclusivity. Moreover, LGBTQIA+ workers often mention being pushed to act as consultants for their employers simply because of their lived experiences. This is likely to exhaust rather than uplift queer voices.
Most companies exist to make a profit, so they need to maintain their customer bases. Resultantly, such companies are unlikely to act in a genuinely transformative or radical manner even during Pride month and may choose to present a more palatable version or “type” of queerness in their advertisements. A rainbow-washed representation of the LGBTQIA+ community will likely show two white cis dads grocery shopping with their kid rather than a polyamorous relationship with three gender-nonconforming BIPOC (black, indigenous, and other people of color) persons. Representing only “acceptable queerness” reinforces the idea that the community is monolithic and all within it demand and desire the same things. This white, cis, middle-class representation is also particularly problematic considering Pride was initially led by trans women of color.
It is crucial to remember that we live within a system built on interlocking forms of oppression. We cannot claim something is genuinely liberating if it doesn't have liberating effects for everyone suffering under oppression. Even if these companies were to make genuine efforts to donate to LGBTQIA+ organizations, they are still capitalizing off the community and contributing to the capitalist system at the root of the problem. Of course, some effort is always better than none, but I believe it is naive to suggest rainbow-washing as radically progressive for the LGBTQIA+ liberation movement. Even genuine allies cannot be fully contributing to true liberation when operating in a liberal market system.
Rainbow washing and the commercialization of queer pride also goes directly against the origins of Pride which are, at the root, anti-capitalist. Queer people’s exclusion from established institutions has facilitated an ever-lasting link between queerness and underground communities rooted in both economic disruption and political subversion. The belief that purchasing a rainbow-colored tote bag from a company that exploits their garment workers and has never heard of Marsha P. Johnson is going to cause transformative change and widespread acceptance of all members of the LGBTQIA+ community is simply beyond comprehension.
As previously noted, rainbow washing allows companies to stick a rainbow onto a product or logo without thinking twice about whether this is something the community genuinely wants or benefits from. By rainbow washing, companies are able to avoid researching and critically considering what kind of structural changes they could make to their operations in order to make a genuine difference. Consumers and companies alike are also encouraged to engage in slacktivism, through which individuals can merely donate to a cause or repost a story to show outward support without taking any real action. Even when companies decide to donate a proportion of their profits to LGBTQIA+ organizations, this consumerist donation structure can have the adverse effect of slacktivism if consumers believe they’ve now “done enough” for the cause. If we could promote inclusivity and guarantee acceptance by throwing a rainbow or money at it, these issues would have been solved by now—but deep down we all know these are structural and systemic issues that require protests and political change.
So, what can we do? First off, when you can try to support LGBTQIA+ owned businesses year-round by buying from them and promoting their work. If you’re buying from straight-owned businesses (especially during Pride month), you can check to see whether their profits go to any LGBTQIA+ charities or if they end up with anti-LGBTQIA+ politicians. It might also be a good idea to check on the general treatment of their LGBTQIA+ staff; for instance, do they have safe spaces for marginalized groups? You might also want to look into their year-long commitments to all types of equity and inclusivity. It's undoubtedly a company’s responsibility to replace rainbow washing with concrete commitment to substantial and sustainable change, and consumers can do their part by collectively calling out and exposing companies.
Behind its bright colors, rainbow washing undermines a great deal of the intentions behind the queer pride movement and overgeneralizes much of the queer experience. While we can all acknowledge that increased representation and visibility of the queer community is important, we should remain critical in our distinction between genuine allyship and corporate exploitation. By supporting grassroots LGBTQIA+ initiatives and queer-owned businesses (instead of billion-dollar corporations), we might one day be able to reframe the rainbow flag not as a symbol of performative support but instead a true catalyst for acceptance and respect.
Written by Ellen Gisto.