The ultra-woke “period-proof underwear” company Thinx is now under fire for sexism and exploiting transgender people.
A lengthy article at Racked details the allegations against Thinx, a company known for its feminist activism and ads featuring blunt discussion of menstruation, as well as its use of a female-to-male transgender model.
Racked describes the company’s “substandard pay, flimsy benefits, and scarce perks” that many employees consider hypocritical, given Thinx’s overtly liberal branding.
According to Racked, the company’s paid maternal leave policy is “galling… in light of Thinx’s proudly feminist stance.” An employee who is a “birthing parent” gets two weeks off fully paid, as well as an optional extra week at half pay.
Employees are also enraged by Thinx’s health coverage, where the lowest premium is $200 a month. One anonymous source said she “can’t even afford birth control.” She continued: “And what does that mean if we’re at a feminist company and I can’t afford to keep myself safe and protected?”
These changes, combined with a work atmosphere rife with “dysfunction and hypocrisy,” has sent nearly a third of the company’s staff fleeing since January.
A Glassdoor review described Thinx top exec Miki Agrawal as a “Trump-like CEO.” She calls herself a “She-E-O” and announced last week that she’d step down from her executive role, though she is remaining the “face of the brand,” Racked reported.
In a statement to Racked, Thinx described the accounts as largely inaccurate, declining to comment on what the company said was “speculation and rumor.” In a later statement to Mic, Thinx said it was “getting to the bottom of these allegations” and “actively working to address and improve our corporate culture.”
After the Racked article ran Tuesday, Tyler Ford, a transgender writer and speaker who uses they/them pronouns, slammed the company in a series of Tweets.
Ford described being considered for a Thinx ad campaign, saying a company rep noted in a phone conversation that they already had a transgender model.
“‘So What’s your angle? What makes you different from [white trans man who models for us]? You need an angle.’ … They continued, ‘Everyone who works with us has an angle. Like, we have a refugee, this trans man,’ etc. You know, casual tokenization,” Ford said, recounting the discussion on Twitter. (The quoted brackets are Ford’s.)
Ford also described Thinx’s intersectionality-themed New York Fashion Week event, saying the proposed script was “literally 2 trans folk harassing each other on stage.” The experience left Ford feeling “like I’m being used so that Thinx can say that they are ‘cool’ & ‘intersectional’ & ‘feminist’ & ‘inclusive.’”
After voicing concerns, Ford said Thinx tried to collaborate on a script, but “I’m tired of having to dredge up the foulest experiences of abuse to put on a performance abt transness for cis folks.”
