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Conservatives Have A New Absurd Outrage: Skittles' Pride Campaign
The campaign may be over, but critics are just now lashing out at the "Taste the rainbow" brand and calling for a boycott.
Conservatives are behind the times as per usual.
Despite the fact that Skittles has been supporting the LGBTQ+ community for years—and did so again during Pride 2023—right-wingers are just now calling for a boycott of the company.
This year during Pride Month, Skittles continued their tradition of featuring colorless bags of Skittles as a way of standing with the queer community and showing that at this time of year there is "only one rainbow matters.”
From May to mid-July of this year, the candy brand introduced gray “colorless” Skittles with limited-edition packaging covered in designs made by five different LGBTQ+ artists.
Shanée Benjamin, Mady G, Symone Salib, Bianca Xunise, and Zipeng Zhu all created beautiful pieces of artwork for the packaging, emblazoned with phrases like “Express yourself,” “Be generous with your love,” “Black trans lives matter,” and “Joy is resistance.”
For every “Pride pack” of Skittles sold this year through May and June, the company donated $1 to GLAAD. And the company also curated a collection of queer stories on Audible to celebrate Pride Month.
But even though the beloved candy brand has been doing this same campaign since 2016, conservative bigots have only just now noticed and decided it’s a problem.
With a slogan like “Taste the rainbow” what were they expecting?
Earlier this month, anti-trans advocate and British influencer Oli London took to X (formerly Twitter) to complain about Skittles celebrating the work of LGBTQ+ artists on their packaging.
“Skittles is raising money with each sale of their new ‘Pride it Forward’ kids candies for notorious LGBTQI+ lobby group GLAAD,” London wrote. “The organization is one of the leading and most powerful LGBT groups pushing for medical transitions on children.”
Skittles is raising money with each sale of their new ‘Pride it Forward’ kids candies for notorious LGBTQI+ lobby group GLAAD.
— Oli London (@OliLondonTV) August 12, 2023
The organization is one of the leading and most powerful LGBT groups pushing for medical transitions on children. pic.twitter.com/UwgdcUBo34
Other people on X agreed with this hateful rhetoric, calling for a boycott on yet another brand conservatives deem to be “woke” or supporting queer causes.
One person wrote, “what’s more toxic: colorful candy dye or child cross hormone injections?”
Another commented, “Well let's add this to my not buying list. It's getting longer each month,” while another wrote, “Taste the indoctrination.”
@MarsGlobal
— Sowell Trumpet (@alot_of_almosts) August 12, 2023
what’s more toxic: colorful candy dye or child cross hormone injections?
Well let's add this to my not buying list. It's getting longer each month
— szil75 (@szil75) August 13, 2023
The hate continued on Instagram where homophobic and transphobic conservatives commented under Skittles Pride post. One person commented, “Where’s the straight skittles? Or traditional family values marriage & Christ skittles?”
Another person wrote, “Stop pushing trans agenda down my throat...hope the same as budweiser will happen to you…”
Luckily none of this hateful rhetoric made the Skittles brand back down which hopefully means we’ll get more amazing queer artwork next year!
Ariel Messman-Rucker is an Oakland-born journalist who now calls the Pacific Northwest her home. When she’s not writing about politics and queer pop culture, she can be found reading, hiking, or talking about horror movies with the Zombie Grrlz Horror Podcast Network.
Ariel Messman-Rucker is an Oakland-born journalist who now calls the Pacific Northwest her home. When she’s not writing about politics and queer pop culture, she can be found reading, hiking, or talking about horror movies with the Zombie Grrlz Horror Podcast Network.
