Grabbing Her by the Brain

Okay, focus.

This morning, for some strange reason, I stumbled upon this two weeks old headline:



This reference features actor Gregg Sulkin. He tweeted this picture with the caption:



You go to the site, it has a buy link for a twenty-one-dollar hat, and on the site you see—for the months of October and November—they're donating part of the profits to charity. Specifically, ten percent of all sales.



So, this is a little bit of a mixed bag situation. There were a good number of people that were angry about this. Some people writing:











So, firstly, I think I can (kind of) understand people getting annoyed at the idea of ten percent. You're saying that it's about empowerment, but you're only donating ten percent of the money to a charity and the rest is just profit. Talk about a brand with a message to do good. But really, it's all about that sweet-sweet much more than ten percent profit.

So I definitely understand where those people are coming from, but you also need to realize that a lot of brands do that. I mean, you can look at Apple and all those places that offer RED products. They be like: Buy this thing, you are actually helping fight AIDS—and also giving us a sweet ass profit.



Stick a minute on Google and look at how little the NFL actually does give towards breast cancer research. And that's why the charity things can be a little bit tricky. Now as far as the argument that it's a group of guys that are profiting, that's just misinformation. It's a great headline, but it's just not true.

Secondly, the “ambassadors” of this program are five people—including Gregg Sulkin. Only two of them are men…




…and the founder is actually a woman. I mean, I don't want to assume her gender, but I think that she's a lady: Elizabeth Ariosto.



And thirdly, to the ladies, does it feel disrespectful if someone calls you a female? Does it feel that much different than a woman? This is a genuine question; I'm not being sarcastic. I've asked some of the ladies in the office and the answers have been a little bit of both yes and no.

It's also an example of seeing people jump down the throat of someone because they used the word they didn't like—that originally used to be offensive. Like I remember when I was originally trying to understand the trans community, I would every now and then use the wrong pronoun and some people would just GO at me. I was like no, let's have a conversation, don't fucking kill me. But that's also understanding that I don't believe everyone is like that.

I'd just love to know what you think.