A fair few companies at the moment are producing adverts
with *gasp* actual GBLT content, whether it’s JC Penny’s and their gay families
or Oreos and their rainbow cookies or some bank suggesting 2 men are buying a
mortgage together – we’re starting to creep into this field.
And it is a big deal. That gasp alone says that. It is
unusual. After all, including us at all instantly sets of a shit storm from the
usual suspects who are outraged, OUTRAGED that you acknowledge we exist. Just
ask this spokesperson from One Million Moms
Quite.
So including us has been and still is risky – and since
the very nature of advertising is to get as many people to open their wallets
as possible, it’s not been a risk many people have taken. In fact, advertising
is one of the most GBLT erased media forms out there unless it is specifically
aimed at and appearing in GBLT media (only a little ahead of children’s media
and, probably, computer games I think). Reduction of erasure is generally good
(though not enough – and in some cases a bad portrayal is worse than no
portrayal at all) simply because there is such a push to deny our existence and
deny our place in society. So, yeah inclusion is a positive.
And it’s a positive that these companies are willing to
risk the wroth of the haters, either because they genuinely want to do a good
thing (*urk* oops, sorry, my cynicism just tried to strangle me) or because
they think that GBLT people and people who like us have more buying power than
the haters.
These are positive things.