Where there’s Barilla, there’s Bigotry

Yesterday, for the first time, another member of the Barilla family opened his mouth about the fiasco that began last week when Guido Barilla announced that the company would not feature gay families in their ads because they like the “traditional” family, and if gays didn’t like that they were free to go eat another pasta – prompting hundreds of thousands, gay and straight, to declare on social media networks that they would take Guido up on his offer and take their pasta dollars elsewhere. Luca Barilla, brother of the CEO, stated that the past few days had been “dramatic” for the company – that clients around the world had asked the company to clarify its position, and that Barilla risked being excluded from supermarket shelves it once dominated. He then blamed journalists for focusing on those “small elements” that might trigger controversy, and asserted that the responsibility was that of one individual and that his brother should’ve expressed himself better in his interview with Italian Radio 24.

It seemed more an assignment of blame and a plea for pity than an apology – and for that perhaps we should be grateful, since every Barilla apology has only made the family appear more narrow-minded and out of touch with consumers:

#1 – Women belong in the kitchen. Oh. Sorry – one woman belongs in the kitchen.

Barilla’s first response to the furor on Facebook was to defend himself by saying he meant only to highlight the “central role of the woman in the family.” The media has tended to focus on the fact that Barilla seems oblivious to the fact that many gay families do contain women….in fact, twice as many women. But in the context of Barilla’s advertising history, this is more outrageously sexist than homophobic. As a woman, Barilla has always rubbed me the wrong way (ambiguously gay pun just for you Guido), mostly because of absurdly sexist ads like this one:

“You’re such a good mom! That’s why the man with the sexy accent wants you!”

Isn’t it annoying how the sexual revolution upset gender politics? Who will stir the pasta now??

#2 – Oh, were you offended by that? Well sooooorry. But come on, doesn’t everyone love a nice straight family?

Hm, that woman-in-the-kitchen thing didn’t fly well either? Let’s try again:

“With reference to my statement yesterday, I apologize if my words have generated controversy or misunderstanding, and if they have offended the sensibilities of some people….
Barilla in its advertising has always chosen to represent the family because this is the symbol of hospitality and affection for everyone.”

Maybe being an heir to the Barilla throne means you get to skip kindergarten, where you learn that you don’t start apologies with “sorry if you were offended, BUT” … and then continue to be offensive. Furthermore, guessing that maybe “some people” didn’t like what he said sounds like he’s willfully ignorant of just what a marketing disaster he set in motion. If you look at how this story exploded on social media, some people were not possibly offended, Guido, thousands were – guess what, it was a deeply bigoted thing to say and people of all sexual orientations are decidedly not down with it.

Also way to throw in a horribly offensive stab at gay families at the end.

#3 – What if I fix it with a video in which I tell you what an open-minded guy I am?

Well, now it just looks like Jon Stewart put you up to this:

“I’ve always respected every person I’ve met, including gays and their families, without distinction….I’ve never discriminated against anyone.”

Wellllll if you don’t count that teeny little time(s) I said gays shouldn’t be allowed to adopt and that I would never make a commercial with gays cause their families don’t count.

Okay! Well I think 50 seconds is long enough, and look at that, I didn’t even have to actually say the words “I’m sorry” or, worse yet, “I was wrong!”

What is hardest to understand, and accept, though, is not that Guido Barilla is basically a modern caveman – because let’s face it, we don’t actually expect the leaders of multinational corporations to have socio-political leanings that are warm and fuzzy – it’s the fact that he thinks it’s ok to tell customers not to buy his product. If being a Barilla means you don’t have to learn how to apologize, it apparently also means you don’t have to ever learn a thing about marketing. But it’s not just that he’s incompetent, it’s much darker than that – it’s that he believed that offending gays (and their millions of straight friends, families, and allies) would not have a material financial impact on his business. And this is where Guido made a big mistake (and apparently never saw Pretty Woman).

Guido is right. Gays are not “normal” – unlike the rest of Italy, they have financially withstood the recession and their spending power continues to grow – to the tune of 20 billion dollars in Italy alone. Worldwide, “pink money” amounts to one trillion dollars of spending a year; in marketing terms, the gay consumer is often described as “high spender, trend setter, early adopter, opinion leader,” a highly valuable target that other brands have been wise to court. The fact that the CEO of a multinational corporation could be so willfully blinded by his own homophobia as to hurt his own business means he deserves whatever consequences ensue, even if his brother Luca wants to cry about it and blame the liberal media.

Barilla has still done nothing to prove that he is not a horrible bigot without a sense of marketing who made an inexplicably stupid statement that alienated millions of consumers because frankly he doesn’t seem to think he needs revenue from gays or the rest of the liberal-minded world. Does it matter what Barilla thinks about gay families? Not really. But does it matter how we react to a public declaration like this? Yes. Italy is a country with no recognition of same-sex partnerships, one of the worst LGBT civil rights records in western Europe, and high levels of homophobic violence.

The Italian parliament recently moved to enact anti-homophobia legislation, which was essentially amended to death to protect anti-gay speech in every aspect of organized social life, including schools, hospitals, and politics.Several days after the Barilla fiasco, members of the far-right chased two openly gay MPs around Parliament with a fennel bulb (finnochio is slang for faggot in Italian).

So in response to the feeling, among some, that a Barilla boycott is ineffective, frivolous, or a diversion from more important issues, it is about much more than that. A boycott will not change the lives of anyone overnight, but it has sparked a national conversation (and no doubt countless conversations worldwide) that needed to happen – and needs to keep happening. And at the very least, it has prompted some pretty adorable ads by the competition: