Rock singer Alice Cooper has lost a brand partnership with a cosmetics company after calling her comments about transgender people a “fad”.
WASHINGTON (TND) – A self-described LGBT+-owned cosmetics brand has ended a partnership with rock artist Alice Cooper after he criticized sex change procedures for minors.
Vampire Cosmetics parted ways with Cooper earlier this month after the singer called “transgender affairs” a “fad” in an interview with music blog Stereogum.
Cooper said in the interview “I understand that there are cases of transgender, but I’m afraid that it’s also a fad, and I’m afraid there’s a lot of people claiming to be this just because they want to be that,” “I find it wrong when you’ve got a six-year-old kid who has no idea. He just wants to play, and you’re confusing him by telling him, ‘Yeah, you’re a boy, but you could be a girl if you want to be.’”
Cooper further stated that individuals should “at least become sexually aware” before “they start thinking about if they’re a boy or a girl.”
He also shared anti-trans rhetoric regarding access to public bathrooms, claiming that allowing transgender people to use bathrooms corresponding to their gender identity would result in violent crimes. “A guy can walk into a woman’s bathroom at any time and just say, ‘I just feel like I’m a woman today’ and have the time of his life in there,” Cooper said. “He’s just taking advantage of that situation … Somebody’s going to get raped.”
Social media users took to X, formerly known as Twitter, to hit back at the brand for the move. “The intolerant and bigoted company, @VampyreCosmetics, apparently nixed their account after saying that experimental, medically unnecessary surgeries on young kids constitute ‘health care,’”
“No clue who Vampyre Cosmetics are, but to cancel a contract based on what Alice Cooper is reported to have said indicates to me that they are not a very ethical company,” another user said. “Values such as commitment, meaning, adhering to a promise made is not something to treat with indifference.”
As of Tuesday, Vampire’s X page is “queer, disabled and proudly neurodiverse women.” Elsewhere on the site, they also state that they “believe gender is a construct and has no place in our business. We refuse to gender our products because they are for everyone.”
Information on the collaboration with Cooper still appears on Vampyr’s website, now with a supplement stating that the company has canceled the deal.