H&M, which is a clothing company and not that thing where your wife ties you up in the bedroom and whips you with chains and things, screwed up over the weekend.
. @hm, have you lost your damned minds?!?!?! pic.twitter.com/EYuCXLZtv3
— Charles M. Blow (@CharlesMBlow) January 8, 2018
The hoodie itself is not all that offensive. Calling kids with a lot of energy “a monkey” isn’t uncommon. Many kindergarten teachers call their group of students, “my little monkeys.” At least, they used to when I was in kindergarten. I’m sure society has changed to where teachers can only refer to students as students and any other term is insensitive in some way.
So, the hoodie is fine.
It’s the model that everyone is upset about. You see, you can’t put a shirt that says “monkey” on it on a black child because, well, if you don’t know why, I cannot help you.
H&M is a Swedish based company who probably didn’t realize their mistake because things are peaceful in Sweden. They’ve probably never even heard of racism.
But that’s not good enough for some, who feel that it was blatant racism. Along with putting a black child in a “coolest monkey” hoodie, they put a white child in a “jungle survivor” hoodie. OH NO!
but wait for it…there’s also the loaded message on the orange hoodie…the junior tour guide & jungle official survivor expert…the entire narrative is a fail for 2018. pic.twitter.com/8hpHQPxOgQ
— paisley (@alwayspaisley) January 8, 2018
H&M pulled the ad and offered up the following apology:
“This image has now been removed from all H&M channels and we apologize to anyone this may have offended.”
Ugh, not the dreaded “we apologize if this offended anyone” apology. Just issue a full apology to everyone and move on. I’m willing to bet it was an honest mistake because H&M isn’t smart enough to do this on purpose in order to garner attention to their brand. No one cares about H&M and they probably like it that way.
Let’s just ban nicknames in order to avoid these mistakes in the future. The hoodies should have read “Coolest Kid in the Class” and “Kindergarten Survival Expert.” No outrage there.