haterade: stewie's 'harry potter' x puma collab couldn't have dropped at a worse time
a JKR partnership? REALLY?!
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And now for something you haven’t gotten in a while… a Haterade rant!
At tonight’s game between the New York Liberty and the Dallas Wings, two-time WNBA MVP and three-time Olympic Gold medalist Breanna Stewart will be debuting a new signature shoe via her Puma sponsorship: the Harry Potter x Puma Stewie 3.
Stewart is a self-identified Harry Potter fan and the shoe will be available to purchase in stores on September 6th. “The sneaker itself is covered in graphics and details that reference Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, including the snake-inspired overlay panel that runs across the midfoot,” according to reporting from Complex. “The Deathly Hallows sign also makes an appearance on the heel and is paired with Harry Potter branding by the collar.”
Boy do I have some questions regarding the decision-making behind this collab. Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you know that J.K. Rowling, the author of the Harry Potter series, has become a rabid anti-trans crusader over the last several years. Just last week, Rowling was named in a cyberbullying lawsuit filed by Olympic gold medalist Imane Khelif, the Algerian boxer whose gender was questioned by an opponent, leading to an international gender panic at the Games (though they’ve always been a site of gender panic tbh).
While collaborations like this are obviously in the works for a long time before they ever go public, Rowling’s anti-trans views are not new. She has been spewing her hatred for a long time. And while Rowling does not retain all the rights to Harry Potter branded merch, the lead image for the campaign makes very clear that she does financially benefit from this partnership: in the bottom right corner it says “copyright and trademark: Warner Brothers Entertainment, Inc., publishing rights copyright JKR.”
When asked about losing fans due to her anti-trans views, Rowling has said that receiving royalty checks helps her sleep at night, which makes this very clear profit feel like even more of a slap in the face. While Stewart is an avowed HP fan, she has also made it clear that she doesn’t align with Rowling’s transphobic views.
Stewart is a queer woman who is married to her former Dynamo Kursk teammate Marta Xargay and has been an outspoken trans ally, including leading an Athlete Ally call for NCAA schools to adopt guidelines for a path to participation for trans athletes in 2018.
“The ‘safety’ of women and girls remains one of the most inaccurate and unjustifiable arguments for why anti-trans efforts are advocated for in this country,” Stewart said at the time. “I firmly believe we should be passing laws and establishing policies that are inclusive of the transgender community and afford them every opportunity to succeed both in sport and in society.”
The comments of the Instagram posts announcing this partnership are full of fans expressing their disappointment.
“Stewie is one of my idols — I think I’m within my rights as a trans person to question why one of my idols would partner with a media empire that funds anti-trans violence, no?” one comment read.
“What makes this so disappointing is that Stewie is such a vocal advocate for so many causes and so even though she most certainly doesn't support JKR's transphobia, this partnership feels in bad taste,” another commenter wrote. “I know that being a Potter fan was a big part of so many of our lives growing up, but it's our responsibility to separate ourselves from its creator, which is impossible to do when she financially benefits from licensed merchandise like this. You can separate the art from the artist but unfortunately you can't separate the profits from the artist- especially when Rowling herself has said that she sees her royalty checks as endorsements of her anti-trans views.”
I asked Out of Your League subscribers what they thought, and similar sentiments were shared.
“The shoes are cool,” one subscriber said in the OOYL chat. “Rowling sucks and it is painful to know these licensing deals continue to line her pockets. Stewie has advocated for trans people (and trans athletes specifically) throughout her career and it’s unfortunate that this collab muddies that.”
Ultimately, I find this to be a head-scratcher and a rare PR misstep for Stewart, who has used her platform for a lot of really worthy causes over the course of her career.
If you want to join us in the OOYL subscriber chat, click here!
a few miscellaneous links (and memes):
Sydney Bauer interviewed trans women athletes about how they’re coping with bans from their sports’ governing bodies
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