Ad Age is marking Pride Month 2024 with our Honoring Creative Excellence package, for which we asked members of the LGBTQ+ creative community to write about pivotal projects or turning points in their careers. (Read the introduction and all the essays here.) Today, guest editor Rana Reeves turns the spotlight to the drag artist and activist Marti Gould Cummings, who writes about why the LGBTQIA+ community needs more than just rainbow-washing from brands.
Drag has always been at the forefront of the LGBTQIA+ movement, from José Sarria being the first openly LGBTQIA+ person to run for public office to Stormé DeLarverie and Marsha P. Johnson at Stonewall to “RuPaul’s Drag Race.”
We have been called on time and time again to march, protest, advocate and most recently to bolster corporate America’s “allyship” for LGBTQIA+ people during Pride Month.
For years we have been put into ad campaigns, commercials and parade floats, and have been asked to perform at offices. This has been a welcome bolster to bringing drag into the mainstream and also a great way to help support queer artists, many of whom live paycheck to paycheck as independent contractors.
As conservative backlash against drag and the larger LGBTQIA+ community sweeps the nation, harming our trans community the most, we need corporations to stand by us. They must speak out against attacks and legislation that put people at risk and lead to an uptick in violence against our trans, non-binary and genderqueer community.
We cannot have these organizations only support us in June. We need them all year.
This Pride season we are seeing more and more companies backing away from Pride events, and no longer bringing in drag artists for their parties and events out of fear that they will be the next targeted entity that the loud conservative mob so desperately wants to bite at.
As drag artists, we cannot be used as pawns in the financial gain of rainbow-washing. These companies that have blasted us on billboards and ad campaigns need to stick by us and not run in fear.
Not only does this have a financial impact on the independent artists who rely on these gigs, but it also raises the question: If they aren’t willing to stick with us, what will they do against us to protect their own image?
We have seen campaigns with positive impact in the past from companies such as North Face, Coach, McDonald’s, Absolut and Orbitz, just to name a few.
These campaigns have not only provided queer people with work but they have shown a positive impact on the community and in marketing those companies as inclusive and supportive.
We need these organizations to continue to stand with us and not back down to the pressure of the alt-right.
You are with us or against us.
