Coffeehouse Company Starbucks has filmed a new advertisement and released it on their social media platforms. The newly designed ad features a transgender woman who visits coffee house to meet her parents. The transgender woman was named as Arpit by her father but later on after realising the reality she named herself as Arpita and started dressing as a girl, due to which her father was disappointed and was not willing to accept her. But when she went to meet her parents in coffee outlet after a longtime, her dad orders the coffee, the Starbucks employee calls her name out and says, “Three cold coffees for Arpita,” indicating that the father has accepted her transgender identity. In the end, the father says, “Beta, you are still my kid. Only a letter has been added to your name.”The commercial promoted normalising and accepting the transgender community.
The caption of the video posted by the brand read, “Your name defines who you are – whether it’s Arpit or Arpita. At Starbucks, we love and accept you for who you are. Because being yourself means everything to us. #ItStartsWithYourName.”#BoycottStarbucks Trend On Twitter After Brand’s New LGBTQ-friendly Ad: ‘Extremist American Gender Ideology’
There was a mixed reaction to the advertisement few went against it while others openly supported the new ad.
A user wrote, “Starbucks does a great job here of ensuring that the vast majority of Indians will never step into its premises. Only thing worse than overpriced, tasteless coffee is overpriced, tasteless coffee with a large dose of extremist American gender ideology.”
Another Twitter user commented, “It draws me further to a brand I have always liked. Initiatives like this that will help rid our heavily prejudiced world of transphobia. Bravo.”
