Reply from the Body Shop re JKR... just so dreadful...

[onlywomennotmen]

Apparently men menstruate too...

^Hello, and thank you for getting in touch with us about our recent tweet to JK Rowling. We wanted to respond to everyone who has reached out to us to clarify our position on this issue.

We are longstanding supporters of the rights of women and girls on issues which affect them and believe it is important to keep having conversations around difficult topics such as this. Every person has the right to live their life free from the fear of violence, especially gender-based violence. The Body Shop has been an active campaigner on this issue since 1994.

The Body Shop’s position on menstruation in relation to trans and non-binary people is that we stand with ALL menstruators. People have periods – women, men and non-binary people. And plenty of women don’t. We value learning from everyone’s experience and we believe the conversation needs to go forwards, not backwards.

We disagree with JK Rowling’s view and wanted to demonstrate our support for trans and non-binary people. We understand why addressing the tweet to JK Rowling’s personal account has been interpreted as an attack on her as an individual, and as a domestic abuse survivor. That was absolutely not our intention. We didn’t get the tone right on this one and we do want to engage respectfully and constructively on these important issues.

We believe it is important to keep having conversations around difficult topics such as this, and doing so constructively. We recognise that our engagement with JK Rowling on this occasion wasn’t as constructive as we would like to be. We all need to educate ourselves, be inclusive and stand together so that we can end the shame and stigma around periods for all menstruators and stand up for what is right in our society.

We stand by our position on the rights of trans and non-binary people, and we will learn from this execution to ensure our communication is stronger and more constructive in the future.

We hope this helps you understand our position. We appreciated hearing yours.^

There's a film called 'The Square' (I think it's on Netflix) that is about a Busy and Important CEO who books a bright and shiny PR agency without fully understanding their proposals. Inevitably, bad things happen.

It's worth a watch, especially if you happen to work at Body Shop HQ and you want to watch something that will make you feel less alone in your mistakes?

I've seen that yourvagesty, it's sublime. I might watch it again. Thanks

My son is here at the weekend, he works at a hipster pr firm, I will watch it with him and bring up the body shop bubble being burst

I watched The Square last week, such a brilliant film!

This will be a business school case study in the next year or so

Yep! Agree Fanta.

Lots of people are asking for the jK period pack tweet to be taken down as offensive. Problem is BS will have hired that agency to get clicks and retweets with its posts on their behalf and stat’s reports will show this one has gone off the scale.

They have to leave it there and get behind the ‘any pr is good pr’ argument, or remove it and explain to BS why their shiny new PR strategy has taken rather steep early nosedive.

To use their own parlance, it’s looking less ‘Awesome‘ and more ‘Shit’ just now for WokeAgency.

Completely fascinating though.

'The Body Shit' - I like it...

Body Shop uk headquarters is based in Hove, where the woke go to live in the woke Brighton bubble area with "woke only no bigots allowed" on job advertisements.

Apart from the men on the board of course, they are the capitalists that bonus hop around consumer goods companies negotiating guaranteed bonuses for their first two years and then piss off to the next mass produced product shifter company once their guarantees have been paid and there's no more bonuses coming in, to do the same all over again. It's a merry go round.

And do we think those bonus hopping executives are passionate about menstruation and women’s rights?

Answers on a biodegradable sanitary pad ....

Somehow its only the men and non-binary people who can menstruate, lactate, gestate etc. etc that need particular rights because they need access to birth control and maternity leave, but why dwell on that kind of unpleasantness!!!!!

Lets just pretend that women suffer discrimination because they wear so much pink!!!

Have a bath bomb!!!!!!

We all need to educate ourselves, be inclusive and stand together so that we can end the shame and stigma around periods

Or alternatively:

"A marketing company told us we should sell the idea that we care about periods (we are not sure why we bought the Body Shop, but we seem to remember something about values based marketing), but as we don't care about women (See our gender pay gap report), we are very happy to increase stigma around sex."

Thought I'd just have a chat with them, see how far I get. Wonder if the 8 minute wait is down to many women asking them why they hate women.

I think they're hoping to Christ nobody bothers waiting 8 minutes.

They are probably bringing someone off furlough to urgently reprogram the chat bot with words like ‘inclusive menstrual movement’

The chat moves faster - maybe they exaggerate the wait time to put people off. You won’t get anything from chat - just parroting ‘men have periods’ we were just trying to be niiiiiiiiice to her.

Ahh missed them! They must have snuck in quietly, no ping, and then all I saw was survey which I gave them ) for.

Started again. Yeah, 16 minutes now. Hmm.

Hang in there - it’s an experience having a grown-ass human telling you that men have periods.

@Destinysdaughter

I watched The Square last week, such a brilliant film!

There's a The Square on Netflix about the Egyptian uprising. I take it that's not what you mean...

g.co/kgs/bmi5Y4

This one.

www.theguardian.com/film/2018/mar/18/the-square-review-ruben-ostlund-cannes-palme-dor

Mark Kermode review for the Gruniad.

Oh be still my beating heart - I got a reply...

“Thank you for getting in touch with us.

We welcome hearing different points of view and your comments have been heard and noted by us.

From all of us at The Body Shop.”

Yeah...nah... f-off Body Shit.

And now their chat is switched off and the .com site doesn’t seem to be up.

I used their live chat the other day. Got nothing out of it really so I just requested that they pass along my comments to senior management. But it's still worth doing, just to keep the volume up. I'd love to know how many complaints they've had across all channels and platforms.

I was on for bloody ages. Not certain it was human.

It doesn't especially matter. I can't see the Body Shop surviving the coming economic crash, anyway. They're over-priced, what they sell now is tat, and their shops are always empty. They're only still around at all because they have an MLM model - and again, in a huge recession, there are only so many over-priced, under-delivering products women will buy from their friends

Exactly what I understand, BS has been in dire straits for quite a few years, propped up by its MLM business which gives it a guaranteed customer base (the distributors who think they’ve got their own businesses) and it enables them to put the costs of doing business onto (mainly) women who they don’t have to employ in a secure way with any safety nets or job security. I’ve never understood why BS has been seen as particularly ethical when it’s been operating this female targeting scam since 1994. Regardless of one’s position re J K Rowling it’s hard to be surprised about BS’s tone if you’ve spent any time watching the MLM industry’s targeting and exploitation of those that sign up to their MLM.

Thank you for your copy and paste response that didn't even bother to include my name, a fabulous way to show your dismissal of natal women.

Judging from the first response I received from your company, natal women's concerns have been dismissed, minimised and vilified.

The Body Shop has shown exactly how little they think of natal women in an incredibly misogynistic manner.

The fact that you have doubled down on the JK Rowling issue after you joined in with the abusive pile on and have had nothing to say about the rape threats, death threats and repeated invitation to choke on/suck lady dick, shows you have no issue with violence against women. Your silence makes you complicit in that abuse.

I'm interested that you have a shaving section for men, men's products, but no mention of women on your website. You're happy to use the the word man, but not woman? Why is that?

I note you have an all male board, your pay gap between the sexes, not gender has also been noted for it's huge disparity against natal women.
You know the difference between men and natal women when it comes to opportunity and pay.

The fact that I've had to repeatedly say natal women, not just women is offensive and ridiculous.

You're a company who sells toiletries, how dare you try and remove the word woman from natural language and then have the audicity to lecture us natal women who rightly so protest.

Avon and all other companies under the same umbrella as you will also be boycotted.

You have successfully alienated your natal women customers, well done.