Pride (In The Name Of Love)

Hello all,

This weekend has seen the annual Pride events held in London. As usual (though in reassuringly small numbers), people took to the internet asking why there is no "Straight Pride" event, in a way that reminds me of the time when I asked my mother why there was a Mothers' Day and Fathers' Day, but no Children's Day. Her reply was that that was every other day of the year, and with LGBT rights this certainly is the case.

The LGBT community is, of course, served badly by the media in most of its forms (popular literature, music, film and television etc.), but there is one area that has consistently underrepresented it, and in my opinion will continue to do so: marketing.

Little seems to have changed since this article was written two years ago. Gay men often seem notable by their absence, and women even less so. Why is this? When Maltesers made the original version of this advert, it featured a gay couple, but it was decided that this limited the market to just gay men. On that logic, of course, no-one in the LGBT community would be able to buy anything. This advert features two pregnant women, but it would be incredible to claim that it would limit the market to just pregnant women, so I do not see how this idea holds. I, despite being a heterosexual male, buy Galaxy chocolate, but not Yorkie bars, and I am sure I am far from the exception.

I don't believe that this situation is likely to improve very soon. Charlie Brooker's Screenwipe showed the difficulties that globalisation has introduced to marketing (6:30 into this video), focusing on the casual racism of the industry, but clearly affecting the representation of LGBT people. The medium must be inherently conservative to appeal to the largest number of people, but its prevalence it propagates the society it is trying to reflect.

Of course, I am aware that it is not the advertisers who are homophobic, racist, misogynistic or anything else. If it turned out that they could make more money featuring homosexual couples in their adverts, they'd start today. It's a nasty system, and one can't help sympathise with Bill Hicks in his classic rant on marketing.