An incredible, and incredibly thoughtful thread:
twitter.com/tvart4us/status/1686440377572573184?s=46&t=WHoOZ_3Kv5G6-FyQuvE0LQ
"It’s Costa them a lot of customers
🧵
There was a lot of opinion pieces on the radio today about the fantastic well thought out, not at all creepy Costa marketing material. The artwork showing a “Transman” with double mastectomy scars has caused outrage. We all know advertisers
climb on any current bandwagon that fits their brief but this one seemed vastly inappropriate for a coffee ad. I remember when the only controversial coffee ad was a man pretending to be a percolator. I mean I’m down with the kids, I don’t mind a controversial ad but
Somehow Costa managed to offend and upset vast numbers of their customers. Today I listened to an elderly man desperately upset that Costa were glorifying something that had emotionally and physically taken a huge toll on his wife, a breast cancer sufferer. She couldn’t call in
Because she had died. I also heard a PR “expert” telling @ TalkTV that Costa were one of the best allies of trans people and want to show that Trans folk are safe and welcome in their establishments. I mean Thank God because otherwise they might consider boiling a kettle.
I can just imagine Skyler desperate for a £6 Frappuccino standing at the door of the local Costa shaking nervously as they wonder if they are safe and welcome there. Come on, anyone with a functioning bank card (sorry Nige but I’m sure you’re sorted now) is welcome in Costa
As far as I can see Costas decision was the result of one of 2 things
- They really care about the trans community so much they are happy to lose customers who don’t “share their values”
Or
- Trans and Rainbow campaigns get them woke points and pats of the back by men who wear
5k pound suits and don’t give a crap about young girls mental wellbeing.
I know which one I’d put money on (I mean I’ll save some now I can’t buy overpriced coffee anymore)
There will be different reason people give for not liking the artwork, all of which will be transphobic of
course but for me it’s this. It’s promotion of the idea of trans euphoria, that if you just remove your breasts you can be free and happy. It doesn’t show the full picture though does it? Doesn’t show the pain, the complications, the effect of losing so much breast tissue,
Necropsy of the nipple, it doesn’t show the girls who regretted it. It’s promotion of surgery to a group who we are often told don’t need surgery to be who they are? So will Costa therefore have a Transman with double D boobs on their advertising? I’m serious, huge boobs please
It’s ridiculous how so much of this ideology contradicts itself & how so much is harmful to women & girls. We’ve been swept into the corner and ignored despite banging the drum on this for years. The promotion of this ideology from businesses, public services and schools must end
We are telling a generation of girls that they will be boys if they just cut their breasts off. They are throwing away part of the body that feeds babies, a part of the body so connected to every inch of you that they even like to remind u you’re on a period. it.That’s why breast
Removal should only be done when absolutely medically necessary. I don’t believe that all the kids with these scars are now happy, they are being told to be and coerced into accepting their mutilated bodies to keep this Trans train on the track. Anything that sews doubt in these
Kids could cost the medical industry millions. So while Instagram tells girls to make them bigger, companies tell girls to lop them off. Whatever happened to accepting your body? To finding peace in having a healthy body? I could go on about lack of inclusion of disabled
People in Costa advertising but I’d rather they put decent disabled toilets in the shops first and make the seating area big enough for wheelchairs. Or even for stick users like myself to be able to have somewhere to wait for our drink where we can sit down. Maybe help with
the sugar & napkins etc because as much as I enjoy perching like a flamingo while I hook my stick on a bin in order to further increase my days sugar consumption it would really be nice to be offered some help. But aye…there’s the rub. Disabled people aren’t trendy, there’s the
pink pound, the grey pound but there’s no wonky pound. No one cares. So until Costa stop virtue signalling & promoting surgeries and do something tangible to improve the lives of their customers they can stick their faux inclusiveness up their pathetic percolator #BoycottCosta"