Twilight star Rachelle Lefevre has hit back at Target’s decision to remove items from its Pride collection, with the actor revealing that she won’t be bringing her non-binary child to the store for a while.
The 44-year-old recalled how she and her seven-year-old first noticed the displays in their local Target in a video shared to her Instagram over the weekend. As she pointed out where the collection used to be, before it was taken down, she recalled her child’s happy reaction to the merchandise.
“My seven-year-old, who’s non-binary, saw it and said: ‘Look, Mom. It’s pride, look. They’re going to celebrate me,” she recalled. “And because some people complained and threw some stuff to the ground, I don’t know what happened, they have moved their Pride selection to the back of the store.”
She then tearfully shared that she won’t be bringing her child to Target throughout the month of June, which is Pride Month in the US.
“So the next time my seven-year-old comes to Target, or rather, I can’t bring them here anymore, at least for the entire month of June. Because if they walk in, and all the other people who walk in go, ‘Where’d it go?’” she said, referring to the Pride merchandise. “[They] are going to realise that they are being successful in trying to erase them.”
Lefevre concluded her video by criticising Target’s decision to take down the collection amidst backlash and threats to employees.
“We could do so much better than this,” she said. “We’re not supposed to negotiate with terrorists. We can do so much better than this.”
In the caption, she also tagged Target, as she accused the brand of taking its “performative allyship” to the “next level”. She also claimed that the retailer could have handled the situation in a different way, as opposed to taking the Pride collection down.
“And don’t anyone come back at me with ‘it was a security issue’ because this is a billion dollar company – if they really care, they can hire extra security but instead they chose to send the message that LGBTQ+ people aren’t worth protecting or fighting for,” she added.
Lefevre added a follow-up to the caption, in which she criticised anyone who wrote “hateful, ignorant garbage” in the comments of her video. She also encouraged those people to focus on finding more happiness in their lives.
“I’m sorry for whatever happened to you to make you susceptible to such lies and made your heart so hardened with hate, I truly am and I suggest you use your precious life force to find joy and fill your days with more love and more joy because you clearly aren’t finding it here,” the Homefront star wrote.
The Independent has contacted Lefevre and Target for comment.
On 24 May, Target first announced that it was pulling some of its Pride Month merchandise after several of its employees experienced inappropriate behaviour from upset customers.
“Since introducing this year’s collection, we’ve experienced threats impacting our team members’ sense of safety and well-being while at work,” Target said in a statement. “Given these volatile circumstances, we are making adjustments to our plans, including removing items that have been at the center of the most significant confrontational behavior.”
Several videos posted on social media have shown customers destroying Target’s Pride Month displays and heavily criticising the retail company for including LGBT+ attire.
Although the company did not specify which items it was removing, Reuters reported that the store pulled items from British designer Erik Carnell’s LGBTQ-focused brand Abprallen. According to the report, the backlash stemmed from Carnell’s other merchandise, which includes images of “Satanic” symbols such as pentagrams.
On the Abprallen Instagram account, the designer – who is trans and gay – condemned the response that led to the decision to remove the items, while clarifying that the merchandise was created for Target’s adult section and not for children.
“Not like there’s real problems in the world. Gotta talk about this instead. Satanic panic and transphobia running riot. Eighties mindset without the cool clothes,” Carnell wrote.
Carnell then addressed the outrage over his Target collection, with the designer sharing a photo of the three items he’d created for the company’s adult section for Pride. He reflected on his partnership with Target, which he said began with the company informing him that some of his designs, such as “Satan Respects Pronouns,” would not be a good fit for the store.
“[Target] was observant enough and had the necessary critical thinking skills to realise that my use of occult imagery is as harmless as any horror movie targeted towards adults, but wanted my collection for adults to be a bit less gothic,” he said.
The UK-based designer also said that he has “no desire to make any children trans or make any children gay,” as he noted that being transgender or gay is “not a choice [and] cannot be forced upon anyone”.
In a statement from Abprallen shared with The Independent, Carnell said he has been “incredibly negatively impacted emotionally” by the “false” narrative that his Target merchandise was meant for children.
