Life

A rainbow shirt at Target won’t turn your kid gay, but (almost) everything else will

Forget “Padam Padam,” this might just be the Pride Month meme to rule them all!
By
Lucy Lawless
Lucy Lawless Photo: Gage Skidmore/via Wikipedia

Target has taken a lot of heat recently. Anti-LGBTQ+ conservatives have called for a boycott of the retail chain due to its long-running annual collection of Pride merchandise, while the queer community and our allies have criticized the company for caving to extremists after it minimized Pride displays in some stores and reportedly refused to sell certain products.

Of course, the controversy around Target—as well as other brands—raises important questions about the limits of corporate allyship. But the anti-LGBTQ+ hysteria over the company’s Pride merch is also ripe for cheeky parody.

Related:

Conservatives are outraged over fake AI images of Target’s Satanic offerings

Target has never sold these items, but right-wingers still think the devil is involved.

Cue the latest Pride Month meme du jour. Recently, Twitter users have been posting a dizzying variety of variations on the “A rainbow shirt at Target won’t turn your kids gay but [insert heartthrob, celebrity soft butch, or vaguely queer cultural reference] will” formula. The result is a tongue-in-cheek compendium of what the characters in the 1999 queer comedy classic But I’m a Cheerleader might call their “roots” that doubles as a fabulously defiant middle finger to anti-LGBTQ+ conservatives who think anything can stop queer kids from being queer.

The vast majority of these posts serve as tributes to users’ first celebrity crushes, from Chris O’Donnell’s turn as Robin in out director Joel Schumacher’s Batman films, to Ewan McGregor’s role as a queer Iggy Pop-esque rocker in Todd Haynes’s Velvet Goldmine, to Commander Will Riker (specifically, his beard) in Star Trek: The Next Generation.

Others are highly specific, focusing on particular moments like when Viggo Mortensen’s Aragorn heaves open some massive doors in one of the Lord of the Rings films, or a candid shot of Kirsten Stewart seemingly staring at Cate Blanchett’s chest at the 2018 Cannes film festival.

Unsurprisingly, a disproportionate number of users have shouted out performances by badass women in action movies or roles that required a varying degrees of butch presentation: Sigourney Weaver in the Alien films, Laura Dern in Jurassic Park, Michelle Yeoh in Yes, Madam, Gillian Anderson in The X-Files, Linda Hamilton in the Terminator movies, and, of course, Lucy Lawless as Xena.

Still other posts are more about the queer vibes and sensibility of certain cultural artifacts: those blatantly homoerotic Abercrombie and Fitch bags that stores just gave away for free with their t-shirts; Parker Posey’s gloriously camp performance in Party Girl; the DVD of Madonna’s Confessions Tour.

And then there’s The Mummy. If you had told me yesterday that the 1999 blockbuster and its sequels were responsible for the queer awakenings of a generation of young LGBTQ+ kids, I might not have believed you. But apparently my head, like the titular ghoul, has been buried in the sand, because there are a truly surprising number of “rainbow shirts at Target…” memes devoted to the Brendan Fraser/Rachel Weisz flicks out there. I guess The Mummy was serving mother all along!

Don't forget to share:
Life
Kristen Stewart Laura Dern Madonna Target Target Pride Collection

Support vital LGBTQ+ journalism

Reader contributions help keep LGBTQ Nation free, so that queer people get the news they need, with stories that mainstream media often leaves out. Can you contribute today?

Once Monthly Annually

Cancel anytime · Proudly LGBTQ+ owned and operated

Club Q shooter expected to take plea deal: “I was abusing steroids”

Previous article

UK to pardon women convicted of homosexuality

Next article

More in Life