Queerbaiting: How Corporations Stand Safely on the Edge of Inclusivity

By Nyah Marquez-Dean

Photo by Scott Drake

This June, same-sex marriage will have been federally legal for a decade. While it’s undoubtable that, as a society, we have moved in the right direction toward acceptance and equality for the queer people who surround us in those ten years, there’s still a long way to go. Despite years of fighting for thoughtful and positive representation in media, it seems we’ve made more of a regression than any progress in the last couple of years. Bigoted, outdated beliefs have made a massive resurgence in mainstream media, especially notable over the course of the last six months. There have been calls impossible to tune out for the erasure of queer people in any and all forms of media.

Every June, queer audiences watch as the profile pictures of many corporations’ social media accounts are rainbow-fied, as ads across our billboards and screens promote the same message: that we are all equal, and that queer people are just as deserving of dignity as everyone is. Snickers, LEGO, Converse, YouTube and many other companies have, in some capacity, utilized queer people or imagery in their ads, but only a handful put their money where their mouths are. Many ads from high profile companies only perpetuate the idea that a simple, careless mention of queer populations is enough to count for real inclusivity. These can include controversial ads like Snickers’ 2007 Super Bowl Ad, a 2002 7-Up Ad, and many others. Every July, we watch all of the already thin “representation” be forgotten. Profile pictures are switched back, corporations rarely actually act on the values they asserted were central to their beliefs for a month, and the celebrities that young people across the country look up to hardly come to their defense.

Ad campaigns are not the only culprits of using queer audiences for a check. Many forms of media, especially in TV shows and films, have teased representation of and for their queer audiences, reeling viewers in without ever truly delivering confirmation or development of any storylines involved. Characters that are made canonically queer are disproportionately killed off, and often treated with little care for accuracy and true representation of real-life queer people. Thin, performative inclusivity is not inclusivity at all.

There is no care for the representation of queer people in the minds of megacorporations and multimillion dollar studios, only the meticulous crafting of pandered ads and to get their money, forgetting their queer audiences until the next June comes around. Representing queer people in media is not forced, it does not erase “traditional family values,” or indoctrinate children, it simply calls for us to be treated with respect, dignity, and understanding.