Under Your Skin: Tegan and Sara and Kiehl’s Queer Celanthropy
Queer popstars Tegan and Sara marked the launch of their charitable Foundation with a partnership with skincare brand Kiehl’s. Let’s take a look at the reasoning and politics behind the venture.
Tegan and Sara: Queer Celebrities?
Tegan and Sara are queer twin sister singer-songwriters who have been releasing music since the mid-1990s. Since then, they have been on a gradual ascent to pop celebrity. With their 2013 album Heartthrob Tegan and Sara toyed with synthpop and new wave sounds that tickled the ears of not only their existing fanbase but also more mainstream listeners. The record debuted at number 3 on the Billboard 200. 2016’s Love You to Death followed suit, featuring on several best-of-year lists.
It’s great that Tegan and Sara are finally getting the recognition they’ve been working so hard for since the 1990s. From their indie roots to their recent 80s-inflected pop hits, Tegan and Sara have moved from the margins to more mainstream arenas.
As queer women, this move has been significant. They’re able to use their exposure to draw attention to important social issues, including LGBTQ rights. For instance, they’ve been outspoken about gay marriage and share pro-LGBTQ posts on social media.
Celebrities are usually associated with the mainstream because they’re part of everyday media and are loved by many people. Queer celebrities complicate these ideas because of how the queer has stood for values outside of the normative (or mainstream). Today, The queer celebrity might be an example of “gaystreaming,” the increased appearance of particular gay images and practices in the mainstream. The phenomenon of the queer celeb is interesting on its own but becomes even more complex when combined with philanthropy.
Tegan and Sara have also chosen to spread awareness is through the creation of the Tegan and Sara Foundation, a non-profit organization which aims to “help support services for LGBTQ youth.” When celebrities use their fame and the media to spread awareness of social causes, it’s sometimes called “celanthropy.” Celanthropists are part and parcel of celebrity culture. Think, for example, of Angelina Jolie’s humanitarian activism, or even Emma Watson’s feminism.
As part of its intervention into LGBT rights issues, the Tegan and Sara Foundation struck up a commercial partnership with Kiehl’s. This involved the skincare company marketing limited edition products to new and existing customers, with proceeds going to the Tegan and Sara Foundation.
What’s the Deal With “Kiehl’s X Tegan and Sara”?
Kiehl’s is an American skincare company which is known for its (supposedly) natural approach to skincare products. Think old-timey apothecary aimed at modern women. Whether or not their products are truly “natural” is up for debate, but they market themselves like that anyway.
The company is owned by L’Oreal, which owns quite a few other beauty brands, including the Body Shop. Like the Body Shop, Kiehl’s has been into supporting social causes, such as AIDS research. It therefore makes strategic sense that Kiehl’s would form a collaboration with the Tegan and Sara Foundation.
As part of the partnership, Kiehl’s offered two limited edition facial cleansers (to account for different skin types) retailing for CA$27 (USD$20) with packaging designed by Tegan and Sara. One hundred percent of net profits made from these sales got to the Tegan and Sara Foundation.
Both Kiehl’s and Tegan and Sara have a strong social media presence. For Kiehl’s the transition into digital marketing has come fairly easily. This is because they’ve been celebrated for their word-of-mouth methods and generous free samples before Twitter and Instagram even existed. Social media is a contemporary formation of word-of-mouth and can be used by companies to increase sales. The reach they have through these channels is tremendous and they can use celebs like Tegan and Sara to make it even wider.
Is Buying This Product Helping LGBT People?
Kiehl’s X Tegan and Sara is an example of “cause-related marketing,” which Mara Einstein explains in her book Compassion, Inc.. This is when companies use social issues to serve their own marketing purposes. Arguably, it’s the company that gains exposure rather than the cause.
A “charitable marketplace” has been created, one in which we come to think of shopping as philanthropy and thereby believe we have been relieved of any responsibility to donate through more traditional methods. The problem with this is that despite one’s best intentions, large amounts of the money being contributed in this way are not going to help the poor and less fortunate. Moreover, issues like poverty, education, and health care are being repackaged in pursuit of corporate profits with little effect on the underlying concern. — Mara Einstein (2012)
But you might be thinking that Kiehl’s has stated that one hundred percent of the profits made from these products goes straight to the Tegan and Sara Foundation. While this may be a noble act, it more likely works to reduce any anxieties consumers might have about the whole partnership really being a vehicle to promote Kiehl’s.
Think about it this way: if a purchase has to be made to support a charitable cause, is it truly charitable? Why not just give the money straight to the charity?
The one hundred percent model has been criticized in more detail elsewhere, but the main point is that it reduces any fears about money-grabbing companies… while the company still gets the glory of exposure, which in turn increases sales.
Either way, Kiehl’s assures buyers that a purchase of the Tegan and Sara product ‘help[s] support services for LGBTQ youth.’
That Sounds Kinda Vague…
It is really vague and the responsibility to research how and where the money goes is left to the individual consumer. This further suggests that it isn’t the social cause that’s the focus here, it’s the product or, more importantly, the brand.
The Kiehl’s X Tegan and Sara press release barely mentions the charitable elements of the partnership, focusing instead on the commercial success of the band. It also advertises the possibility for consumers to win tickets to a private Tegan and Sara concert by peeling a sticker off their (presumably purchased) cleanser and entering a code (and entering personal details — valuable data which can be used for commercial purposes).
An article on Newswire was slightly more specific, telling us that “The foundation’s initial focus will be on improving economic opportunity, access to health services, and media representation for LGBTQ women.” It also states that it hopes to “activate and unite influencers, fans and service providers to break down the cultural and institutional barriers that keep lesbian and queer women down.” Again, exactly how they aim to break down cultural and institutional barriers remains a mystery.
Indeed, the Tegan and Sara Foundation website itself is vague too. You get some information that the Foundation is “fighting the inequality that prevents LGBTQ girls and women from reaching their full potential” and that it’s “an extension of [Tegan and Sara’s] work, identity, and commitment to supporting and building progressive social change.” Apart from this, no information is given as to how the Foundation supports LGBTQ women and girls or where monetary donations actually go.
A few months after the Foundation was launched, its benefits were gradually being presented in a more specific way. In an interview with Jen Richards, the band describes the kinds of causes the Foundation has been involved in. This includes bringing together women in the tech sector and contributing to counseling services. Still, there’s further mention of “partnerships,” which means they’ll probably be sharing the spotlight with one corporation or another again in future.
Should We Be Supporting This Partnership?
I’m not here to tell you not to buy the problematic cleanser but it is important to consider the political context of said problematic cleanser.
The thing with brands like Kiehl’s is that they exist to sell products. Actually, they exist to sell products very specifically to women (Kiehl’s offer some products aimed specifically at men but these are comparatively fewer than those for women). Arguably, they sell products serving to reinforce particular, “acceptable” modes of femininity which women are heavily encouraged to stick to (hence the focus on anti-ageing in a lot of their products).
To add to this is Mara’s point that cause-related marketing is often aimed at women in general because women are supposedly better consumers. This is why a lot of products that support social causes are designed to appeal to women. And while some of the language surrounding the partnership refers to LGBTQ “youth,” most of it refers to women and girls, further highlighting the urgency of the cause as being woman-specific (and therefore possibly speaking more to the concerns of female consumers).
But let’s think about the queer elements. Tegan and Sara are queer women and I’m not talking down the positive influence they’ve had on many queer people. However, it’s fairly safe to say that the people Kiehl’s are targeting with these products are probably fans of Tegan and Sara anyway. And fans of Tegan and Sara are fairly likely to be queer themselves.
This brings us to the issue of the social marginalization of queer people and the fact that they are more likely to be unfairly hit by poverty, homelessness, harassment, unemployment and suicide. They’re also more likely to be poor. This reveals the potentially ethically questionable motives of a company that asks for $27 for one facial cleanser.
There’s also a wider political context of partnerships like Kiehl’s X Tegan and Sara. Current politics are said to partake of neoliberal capitalism. Neoliberalism is a set of practices in which the state withdraws from important social issues such as welfare and focuses more on privileging commercial profit and the empowerment of the individual. LGBTQ activism and identity have previously been positioned outside these practices because of their support of welfare programs and collective action. This makes the inclusion of LGBTQ issues into capitalist activities such as the marketing of skincare products somewhat jarring.
We can explain this by thinking about gaystreaming and how neoliberalism takes steps to account for anti-capitalist criticisms of itself (I write about this further in my article about the phenomenon of postfeminism). Neoliberalist capitalism also values what’s referred to as pink money, that is the purchasing power of the gay community. In this sense, it thinks of LGBTQ people (mostly characterized as white gay men) as equal to straight people — but only in terms of how much money they can spend on products and thereby contribute to capitalism.
By incorporating LGBTQ politics, neoliberalism makes it seem as though progress is being made in terms of queer empowerment, but it only encourages this in very limited ways. In the case of Kiehl’s X Tegan and Sara, it privileges a queer consumer who has enough money to spend on its products.
We shouldn’t just look at support of these kinds of partnerships as being down to individual choice. We should look more closely at the wider political context of the use of LGBTQ identity in the mainstream. Is it really evidence of an embrace by corporations of LGBTQ people? Or is there more to it in terms of who gets to have what products, who makes them and why they’re involved? It’s all part of a bigger picture.
You might argue that the money will go to the Tegan and Sara Foundation either way, which is true. On the other hand, you could just donate to the Foundation, or to a local LGBTQ charity which is more transparent about its motives.
If you appreciated this post, consider liking and sharing using the buttons below and maybe give me a little follow.
