“Anything women can do, men in dresses can do better.” That’s the message from major American corporations and tech giants on International Women’s Day in 2023.
Already, cities, organizations like the ACLU, politicians like Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, and members of the Biden administration, including First Lady Jill Biden, are choosing to share this special month and day with men.
Now, even the companies you likely engage with daily are pushing women out of their Women’s History Month campaigns to make room for confused men. Here are five international brands that chose to use men as the face of their celebrations of female-led advancements.
Apple
The first thing Apple users see when they visit their device’s App Store on International Women’s Day on March 8 is a giant red poster featuring a dolled-up plus-size “fat positivity” activist named Naomi Hearts.
Apple users who click on the square are redirected to an article about Hearts’s self-love campaign and desire to garner support for dangerous and irreversible procedures such as chemical castration and genital mutilation.
Google India’s advertisement celebrating “equal rights and opportunities for women” on International Women’s Day features Prakriti Soni, a man who expressed the belief that he was a woman starting in 2020.
The ad has more than 4 million views.
Hershey’s
To promote International Women’s Day, Hershey’s Canada chose Fae Johnstone, a man who masquerades as a woman, as one the newest faces of the popular candy bar company’s wrapper.
Johnstone, who leads an LGBT activist organization that prides itself on forcing leftists’ equity agenda in workplaces and on children, is also featured in the company’s Women’s History Month video advertisement.
“We can create a world where everyone is able to live in public space as their honest and authentic selves,” Johnstone says in the ad. “See the women changing how we see the future @Hershey’sCanada.”
Despite backlash for inviting a man into women’s spaces, Hershey’s Canada stood by its decision to include Johnstone.
Seafolly
Popular Australian swimwear brand Seafolly is known for showcasing its products on female models such as Gigi Hadid. This year, right before International Women’s Day, Seafolly chose a bearded man posing as “nonbinary” to be the star of their newest advertising campaign.
“This marks the first time iconic Aussie swim giants @seafollyaustralia have worked with a Trans ambassador/brand partner,” Deni Todorovič wrote in an announcement on Instagram.
Some Seafolly customers are abandoning the brand for “mocking women” by choosing a man to parade around in bikinis.
KitchenAid
Even before Women’s History Month began, companies started pushing for men in their ads targeting women.
KitchenAid has a history of pouring money and effort into “female empowerment” campaigns, including its documentary, “A Woman’s Place,” which highlights the company’s “challenging inequality, helping to advance women in culinary arts and support the industry at large.”
That all went out the window when the appliance company selected Dylan Mulvaney, a man who gained online fame for his belief that “girlhood” is a costume that can be worn by anyone, to help headline its 2023 Color of the Year campaign launch and newsletter in February.
It’s becoming all too commonplace for businesses to pay delusional men to sell products- including exclusively female ones like tampons- to real women. That’s a massive slap in the face to the women of the past, present, and future.
Big businesses say they want to support and empower women, but they can’t do that if they are butting females out of their board rooms and ads to replace them with bearded men in dresses.
Asking men to headline is a sign of regress, not progress. Companies that partner with men pretending to be women show nothing but contempt for women and their accomplishments.