New Zealand Pizza Chain Catches Hell for Transphobic Cookie Fortune

New Zealand Pizza Chain Catches Hell for Transphobic Cookie Fortune

It’s a cute enough idea: “misfortune cookies”. An incredibly clever friend of mine even came up with a bunch of his own: ‘They all know what you did.’ ‘It shows even when you part your hair like that.’ ‎’Your next business trip will be an interruption during an epic seizure of diarrhea.’ Haha, right?

Well, HELL Pizza, a very popular pizza chain here in New Zealand, has crossed a line and infuriated many, with a misfortune cookie containing the message: “You will marry a transgender”. Customer Tamsyn Clemerson was shocked to find it, and shared a photo of the message and cookie wrapper on her Facebook Wall. It was shared several times around, and resulted in several outraged responses on HELL Pizza’s Facebook Page, all generally expressing the sentiment that portraying a relationship with a trans person as a “misfortune” is bigoted and in poor taste.

Calls have been made to local store managers and marketing divisions, and so far no one contacted was at all aware of the transphobic message being among the regular run of misfortunes. No official statement has been released by HELL regarding the message, thus far.

Some past controversies HELL has been known for have included a billboard with a picture of former US President George W. Bush, with the caption: “HELL’s too good for some evil bastards”, and another billboard promoting hot cross buns for Easter: “For a limited time. Kind of like Jesus.” All potentially offensive to someone, but I will argue that, as an immortal religious icon and a wealthy political figure respectively, Jesus and Bush aren’t much affected personally by such statements.

In a world where trans people are still regarded with revulsion, mistreated and attacked on a regular basis, we don’t need more attempts at “shocking” humor like this one. I am generally a fan of HELL Pizza, having them in my regular home-delivery rotation, and sincerely hope they discontinue this particular “misfortune” so we can all have a good customer-service relationship again.

This entry was posted on Saturday, December 3rd, 2011 at 5:28 am and is filed under Drag & Trans, Food & Drink, News & Rumors. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.