Nearly 1,000 people have signed a petition demanding that cosmetics retailer Sephora stop selling an eyeshadow called “Druggie,” which they say is insensitive to those battling addiction.
“Using the term ‘druggie’ in your eyeshadow palette is not only making light of 76,522 deaths,” the petition says. “It is also incredibly heartless to the families of those who lost a loved one. … This is not okay.”
The petition includes a few suggestions about what names would be preferable, including “voguish” and “venomous.”
Sephora “deeply apologize[d]” to those upset about the “Druggie” eyeshadow in a tweet on Friday.
The eyeshadow is made by Urban Decay. Sephora continues to sell that company’s makeup palette, but it told Huffington Post it would not reorder any more “Druggie.”
This certainly isn’t the first time cosmetic companies and retailers have been criticized by the politically correct.
In November, the New York Times ran an entire op-ed—entitled “Paint Your Nails with the Patriarchy!”—about “how we arrived in our glittery golden age of misogynist nail polish names that are not only silly, but also reinforce sexist stereotypes.” Much of the piece simply listed supposedly offensive nail polish names.
The edgy makeup brand behind Sephora’s controversial eyeshadow, Urban Decay, has a whole host of product names that could trigger social justice warriors. This particular palette includes an eyeshadow called “paralyzed” (insensitive to the disabled?), and other Urban Decay collections include “paranoia” (insensitive to those with mental illness?) and “gun metal” (insensitive to gun violence victims?).
— Jillian Kay Melchior writes for Heat Street and is a fellow for the Steamboat Institute and the Independent Women’s Forum.