A popular rockstar just got canceled for sharing the same views as a majority of Americans.
On Friday, the gothic makeup brand Vampyre Cosmetics dropped a collaboration with legendary rock artist Alice Cooper over the singer’s recent comments about transgenderism.
During a mid-week interview with Stereogum, the performer joined his celebrity peers Paul Stanley and Dee Snider in sharing concerns about the contemporary transgender craze.
“I’m understanding that there are cases of transgender, but I’m afraid that it’s also a fad,” Cooper said. “And I’m afraid there’s a lot of people claiming to be this just because they want to be that.”
“I find it wrong when you’ve got a six-year-old kid who has no idea. He just wants to play, and you’re confusing him telling him, ‘Yeah, you’re a boy, but you could be a girl if you want to be,'” Cooper said.
Vampyre Cosmetics responded to the comments with a statement the following day.
“In light of recent statements by Alice Cooper we will no longer be doing a makeup collaboration,” the company wrote. “We stand with all members of the LGBTQIA+ community and believe everyone should have access to healthcare.”
Vampyre was preparing to debut a new collection with “the undisputed Godfather of Shock Rock.” The makeup company started taking preorders on Aug. 14. Last week’s statement clarified all sales will be refunded.
With Cooper’s net worth reportedly at $50 million, the cosmetic line needed the partnership with “the original makeup disruptor” far more than he needed them. The impulsive cancellation is a bad business decision for a company that might want to expand — and stupid in light of public opinion.
There’s nothing remotely controversial in Cooper’s comments on transgenderism. A series of polls out this spring found the pendulum swinging away from support for permanent transgender medical interventions for kids.
A Washington Post-Kaiser Family Foundation poll in May found that an overwhelming majority of adults, nearly 7 in 10, oppose puberty blockers for children aged 10 to 14. Nearly 6 in 10 oppose cross-sex hormones for 15- to 17-year-olds.
Fifty-five percent of Americans also told Gallup it is “morally wrong” to “chang[e] one’s gender.”
Another poll last fall from Summit.org with McLaughlin and Associates found that 75 percent, or 3 in 4 Americans, agreed the transgender movement has “gone too far.”
[RELATED: Support For Transgenderism Is Cratering]
If Vampyre Cosmetics were interested in expanding its products to a broad audience, the company might have stayed silent over the few headlines generated from Cooper’s interview. Corporations, however, too often seem to forget that not saying anything is an option. But Vampyre Cosmetics is clearly playing to a different audience — the same one that terrorized state capitols in Tennessee, Montana, Kansas, Kentucky, Florida, Oklahoma, and Missouri for the sake of child access to irreversible transgender procedures.
Cooper didn’t say anything that was remotely disparaging of trans people. The singer simply questioned the left’s proclivity to affirm child gender dysphoria — or simply to cultivate confusion. In other words, he committed thought crimes.
Meanwhile, transgenderism is the only area of modern medicine where the patient guides the so-called treatment. The compassionate standard of care for anorexic teens, for example, is not to “affirm” body dysmorphia by calling patients fat and recommending them for liposuction. The response is intensive therapy to guide the patients to reality.
