The North Face isn’t getting rid of its Pride collection — no matter how much conservatives whine and cry.
This year, the popular outdoor apparel company released an ad for its second “Summer of Pride” campaign, featuring drag queen Pattie Gonia. While the ad simply encourages all people to get out in nature more, conservatives are up in arms, claiming the collection and commercial are persecuting them and “grooming” their children.
“Nature lets you be who you are, so, for the second year in a row, The North Face is hosting Summer of Pride together with Pattie Gonia (they/she) to celebrate you and all the beautiful ways you get outside,” the ad reads.
“Hiii it’s me Pattie Gonia, a real-life homosexual, and I’m here with The North Face to help you come out… in nature with us,” Gonia says.
The North Face is also selling Pride merch, including shirts, shorts, shoes, and other gear perfect for a healthy life in the outdoors. As usual, conservatives are fully against gay and trans people being healthy and are calling for a total boycott of the company.
Conservatives are also saying that The North Face is "preying" on children by having kid-sized merch in its Pride collection. They are showing a screenshot of The North Face website with several kids' items of clothes with rainbow colors.
These items do not appear on The North Face’s website, or if they do, they don’t come in rainbow colors or the pattern shown in the screenshot. None of the kids' clothes pictured actually had any LGBTQ+ logos or explicit messaging on them, but still, it was enough for conservatives to scream “groomers.” We are unsure if the image was photoshopped or if The North Face removed some kids' rainbow clothes from its site.
Just recently, Target reacted to similar threats of boycotts and attacks by moving some Pride merch to the backs of stores and completely removing other merch. The North Face is doing the opposite and standing strong, refusing to give in to whining conservatives.
“We recognize the opportunity our brand has to shape the future of the outdoors and we want that future to be a more accepting and loving place,” the company wrote in a comment on its Pride post (comments have since been disabled on the post). “We’re partnering with Pattie because we believe the outdoors are for everyone.”
“The North Face online community is designed to be a safe, positive and inclusive environment. It's why we have a zero-tolerance policy against racist, discriminatory, threatening, abusive, harmful, vulgar or attacking social media comments, which will be removed immediately.”
Hopefully more companies will stand up to hate like this.
