L’Oreal’s First Trans Model Goes Off the Reservation

You want to do the right thing as a cosmetics mega corp. Maybe a bunny or two has to die in the lab to perfect the blush for Chelsea prostitutes to look ruddy in the cheek. It’s all for the cause. As is generating massive pomp and circumstance around hiring your first trans spokesmodel. You’ve got to have one. Nearly one-third of one-percent of people are transgendered. But only half the stories regarding style and fashion involves a tranny. That’s not balance. Dispute the math later.

L’Oreal UK hired a former dude re-named Munroe Bergdorf to be their first tranny front. Everything was going swimmingly until they forgot what the “activist” part of Bergdorf’s “model/activist” self-identifier on social media meant. But a few days into new hire status, Bergdorf celebrated with a massively racist screed on Facebook:

“Honestly, I don’t have energy to talk about the racial violence of white people any more. Yes ALL white people. Because most of ya’ll don’t even realise or refuse to acknowledge that your existence, privilege and success as a race is built on the backs, blood and death of people of colour. Your entire existence is drenched in racism. From micro-aggressions to terrorism, you guys built the blueprint for this shit. Come see me when you realise that racism isn’t learned, it’s inherited and consciously or unconsciously passed down through privilege. Once white people begin to admit that their race is the most violent and oppressive force of nature on Earth… then we can talk.”

That’s a nice little ditty. Not particularly more pejorative than you might hear at a college central campus rally these days, but over the line for corporately condoned speak. Save for maybe Google where you get a statue.

L’Oreal immediately “cut ties” with Bergdorf, citing ethics differences. They had to realize Bergdorf was not simply going to go away, not as an “activist”. Bergdorf immediately turned her venom on L’Oreal, calling for a boycott:

“So when a transgender woman of colour, who has been selected to front up a big brand campaign to combat discrimination and lack of diversity in the beauty industry, speaks on her actual lived experience of being discriminated against because of her race and identifies the root of where that discrimination lies – white supremacy and systemic racism – that big brand cannot simply state that her thoughts are not ‘in line with the ethics of the brand.”

In short, I’ll say what I want, no matter how much it hurts your business, and if you ever fire me, it only confirms your intolerance. Catch-22 motherfuckers.

Bergdorf insists that the boycott is necessary because L’Oreal really only cares about one thing, money. Without any irony or self-awareness as to that being the same reason a not particularly attractive tranny person was hired to be a makeup model for them in the first place. They don’t care about you, you don’t care about them. It’s called capitalism when money changes hands in that relationship. 

A sane person might take away from this ordeal how hiring anybody with the word “activist” in their profile is a horribly bad idea. That goes for any color, creed, or dick, or hole where dick used to be. Everybody has a right to talk shit about their company’s customers, just not on the company dime. As far as disgruntled high maintenance talent goes, you’re no Kaepernick. 

_{Photo credit: Instagram}