"It's not a choice. It's the way we're built"

Andrea Huang

Members of LGBTQ have historically been discriminated by society for an array of reasons – being too flamboyant with their ways, liking same-sex individuals, and simply just for being different, to name a few. But on the opposite end of the spectrum, society has also viewed gay people with a tendency to be more creative and talented than the average folk. With that being the case, in addition to gay couples not having children the traditional way, they have more discretionary income to spend than the average family.  Even though the majority of society may still be stuck in their hard-headed ways of frowning upon homosexuality, over the past few years businesses have employed the media, turned over a new leaf and started marketing towards gay people. Subaru’s slogan for the millennium, “It’s not a choice. It’s the way we’re built” speaks more than just it’s transmissions. Using Eli Clare’s experience and John D’Emilio’s analysis of homosexual’s experiences, I will have to argue that Subaru’s marketing strategy is genius in that it embraces the gay community into society, effectively relates to all gay individuals, and stimulated their sales during a recession.

            Despite societal norms and cultural taboos, Subaru’s Chief Marketing Officer Tim Mahoney decided to challenge America’s conservative views towards homosexuals. Subaru became the first American automaker to tap into the gay community in the 90’s, and brilliant for doing so (Kinsey, Matt, 2009). In the modern world it is essential to have a car in order to have a comfortable and convenient life. If one were to survey a middle-class neighborhood, they would expect to find at least one to two cars per household. In 2009, (a year into the start of the current recession we are in) Subaru sales went up 10%. Their decision to equip its vehicles with all-wheel drive coincided with their slogan, “It’s not a choice. It’s the way we’re built”, a statement easily relatable to anyone that identifies as being gay.

Naturally, human beings do not have a choice in the person that they are. People are born with a certain personality, disposition, sexual orientation. If they do change a certain aspect of who they are and how they feel, normally it is due to external pressures by outsiders, or even family and friends. D’Emilio describes the typical homosexual experience in “Homosexuality and American Society”, as one that is lonely and often painful due to the dominantly heterosexist society and views (D’Emilio, 18). This has led them to suppress and hide themselves away from the limelight, a prime example of homosexual oppression.

Eli Clare describes in her “Stolen Bodies, Reclaimed Bodies: Disability and Queerness” article, that in order to eradicate oppression one must transform their mindset from seeing disability or homosexuality as being wrong, to one that sees no harm in bodies being built the way they are (Clare, 363).  In this context, serious work needs to be done to reconstruct the belief that there is a right or wrong for being a certain way. When it comes to human sexuality or bodily defects, people need to be accepted for the way they are or it poses the threat of alienating that group of people. Subaru has done a tremendous job in using the media to market to the gay community and increase sales, not just for the benefit of profit, but because it is the right thing to do.

Bibliography

Clare, Eli “Stolen Bodies, Reclaimed Bodies: Disability and Queerness”

D’Emilio, John “ Homosexuality and American Society: An Overview” from Sexual

Politics, Sexual Communities in the United States 1940-1970. Chicago, III: University of Chicago Press, 1983

Kinsey, Matt. (2009, 10 28). GLAAD honors gay-friendly brands at inaugural media awards in advertising [Web log message].