Eater - What’s in a Boycott?

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TikToker and actress Dylan Mulvaney at he PFlag 50th Anniversary Gala in NY. | Getty

Welcome to Eater’s Weekend Special, an inside look at what our staff was buzzing about this week

If you’ve had television or internet access, a TikTok account, or even just a passing interest in Big Beer™, you’ve probably heard the hubbub surrounding Bud Light, boycotts, and TikToker and actress Dylan Mulvaney. The basic premise of the beer boycotting drama is deceptively simple, but it’s a reminder of why successful boycotts work — and why some don’t.

The whole firestorm boils down to an astonishingly unremarkable social media moment: A big brand sent an influencer some of its product for a sporting event. That’s it. Here’s the more detailed version: As part of a paid sponsorship, Bud Light sent Mulvaney, a trans woman, beer for March Madness. In a short video, Mulvaney, who was celebrating her first year as an out trans woman, used the beers to both advertise the sponsorship and toast her anniversary. But this led to a wave of anti-trans backlash that featured prominent conservative celebrities shooting at beer cans and many people on the right calling for outright boycotts. Now, two executives from the beer’s brewer Anheuser-Busch have announced they’ll be taking leaves of absence.

On its face, boycotting a brand like Bud Light might feel like the obvious thing to do when a brand acts in a way that seems to betray the core values its customers believe it holds. Take the calls for boycotts of Amy’s Kitchen in April last year, for example. Amy’s is a brand that centered its ethics and its “positive impact” on various communities in all of its branding. The company spoke extensively about its belief in providing customers with good, healthy food choices as part of its efforts to take care of people. But when employees alleged mistreatment, saying that the company put them in dangerous working conditions, numerous independent organizations like More Perfect Union and Veggie Mijas began calling for boycotts to pressure the company to raise its workplace safety standards and allow employees to unionize. 

Or, consider the Martin’s potato roll ruckus, during which Philadelphia publication Billy Penn reported that the company’s executive chair gave more than $100,000 of support to far-right, Trump-endorsed Pennsylvania senator Doug Mastriano, who has been involved in a variety of intensely conservative political scandals, from attending the January 6 rally on the Capitol and comparing calls for gun control to living under Nazi Germany to spreading denial about the validity of two COVID vaccines. In response, cookbook author J. Kenji López-Alt and self-proclaimed “food antagonist” Joe Rosenthal began organizing a boycott on Instagram, a platform on which the two have significant social followings.

But things get a bit messy when you try to compare these cases to Bud Light and Mulvaney’s. Why? Because at their core, the other two boycotts point to clear workplace issues or the ethical problems tied to allowing a deeply politically involved executive — known for spreading ideas that targeted historically marginalized communities and disparaged lifesaving medical resources during a global pandemic — to lead a company that swore it held no political leaning. 

In both cases and many others, the boycotts were useful tools for corralling many underrepresented people’s opinions and desires into a clear, collective message that those with power couldn’t ignore, despite their best efforts. They’ve been used to expand civil rights, overturn discriminatory workplace policies targeted at women and Black employees, and even combat the Lavender scare in the 1950s. (Surprised? Bon Appétit’s Alma Avalle has a great little primer for you on how a boycott of Coors helped pulled this off!) That’s the key: At their most impactful, boycotts are focused on some type of tangible change tied to a direct social, political, economic, or real-world danger.

But here, the beer brand’s critics aren’t protesting a major workplace violation, there’s no ethical deception that directly violates the company’s supposed moral code, nor are there any real, direct political implications for Bud Light consumers. So, the only real goal for the boycotting customer base is to voice their transphobia. And what’s become the target of this tumultuous storm of anti-trans hate is a 26-year-old who raised a beer to a widely beloved sporting event, and herself, during a dime-a-dozen influencer campaign.

If that’s enough justification to break out a gun for beer can target practice, that’s probably the sign to log off and touch some grass. Oh, and grab a beer; you might need it. — Jesse Sparks 

Further reading:

• Bon Appétit reminds us that boycotting a beer is, ironically, really, really gay
• Vox dives even deeper into the weeds with the Bud Light-Mulvaney scandal
• And a chaser: What happens when your caterer skips the beer and your wedding?

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