Shortly before or after my delivery, I started following a t-shirt company on Instagram; The Bee and The Fox. They make cute t-shirts with cool sayings for about $28 each. Their Instagram feed has a cool vibe and I was really into their shirts, thinking I'd order one for a family portrait shoot this spring (or maybe even a shirt for me and a onesie for the babe). I followed them for about a month, started to window shop on their site, and was really thinking about purchasing a shirt when, of course, I noticed the lack of size representation in their models and on their IG, so I did what I always do and I brought it up with this comment on a post:
It was a pretty run-of-the-mill comment that warranted not much of a reply except for maybe, "Thanks for bringing this to our attention, we'll consider it." But of course, as per usual, small businesses run by a husband and wife (or just one person) are almost always also run by idiots who lack basic customer service skills, because this was their reply (and my subsequent reply)...
Ok, so from there, what happened was an all out war between me and their followers, some really long and sarcastic and patronizing Instagram messages, a very vulnerable e-mail from me with an apology followed by some really condescending e-mails from them and just, like, a LOT OF BULLSHIT.
I took screenshots of everything, but I'm not gonna post it all here. (You can see it in my Flickr album if you want.) I couldn't possibly organize all of the information anyway, and that's not really the point. The point is :
1. The Bee and The Fox is run by hypocrites with no integrity
2. I can circumvent the entire issue anyway
So, in our IG exchange, where I told them I could just walk down the street and buy tees with their stupid sayings on them anyway and also that their hashtag on IG has over 8,000 posts with all these people of size...and yeah, I sent them about twenty photos. I wasn't the only petty, sarcastic bitch that day, because they sent me equally patronizing e-mails with a whole bunch of photos from their stream, as if I hadn't even looked through their stream. But they also sent me this :
Ok, so this is one of the problems when any company or artist is asked to feature more diversity in their models or actors or employees or whatever. It is SUPER EASY to say "we look for X, Y, Z, and those have nothing to do with diversity!" Because, look, obviously, every company is looking to create a great product or image and every artist is trying to tell a great story or WHATEVER. OBVIOUSLY. But it takes work to find representation that is more diverse than the status quo. And also, if you post black and white photos, don't feed me a plate of bullshit about the color in a photo, I'm not eating that. So yeah, this is a standard sort of scape goat, apologetic, hands in the air, "it isn't our fault" kind of response and it's just dumb.
But it shouldn't surprise me because here is a little blurb on their website :
Sooooooo...you're using INSTAGRAM, which is a SMART PHONE APP, to SELL YOUR T-SHIRTS OVER THE INTERNET!?!?!
Ugh, the hypocrisy.
There's more, obviously, so much more, but the bottom line is The Bee and The Fox is run by a couple of boring idiots who are attempting to sell a time before the technology they are using to sell their product and also they have no integrity, they're patronizing, and they have idiot followers who don't know what the definition of "attack" is.
And I have a solution!!!
It's a t-shirt shop called "Mama Badger, Baby Frog" (also on Instagram with the same username) and you can buy the same crap The Bee and The Fox makes only BETTER because you can choose your own typeface and the t-shirt you want, or you could buy more creative and interesting t-shirts, and almost all of them cost less!
Yeah, so I found a company called, Spreadshirt, and it's a place where anyone can create their own t-shirt shop. (It's so easy, it probably took me five minutes to set up my first shirt and design.) You can make your own designs, for free, upload them to their shop and have an entire shop site, FOR FREE, and they have this cool t-shirt designer which means you can take ANY SHIRT and choose the exact product you want (not all boring black text on white tee) and move the text around and whatever.
So, Mama Badger, Baby Frog is my site with lots of cool tees already uploaded, including just a ton of designs I made that are just the most awesome. And I have so many more ideas!!! Or you can just go make your own t-shirt. Oh, and I've ordered a couple, and the quality is very good.
So the resolution to this Fat Tuesdays is that you don't even need to mess with that stupid company anymore, 'cause I found a way to circumvent the entire process!!! (Also, I have some really great t-shirt ideas, and I'll make any t-shirt you request.)
