Requiem for Target
Someone asked me what I would like to do with my mom if she were suddenly returned to me, and I said, with a self-conscious laugh, “Go to Target?”
My mom would laugh too, probably. My mom, who sewed matching dresses for my sister and me, who devised her own curriculum for our two-student summer school, who read books to us, who diligently cared for all the pets we abandoned. She wasn’t some shallow shopaholic, is what I’m saying, though she did love a bargain. Yellow clearance stickers adhere to my DNA.
If I peel back my memories, I arrive at a time when our local Target was FedMart. When Target opened, I was scared of its red bullseye. Did they sell guns? (They didn’t, but Walmart does.)
On any given Saturday in the mid-nineties, my mom might announce a Target run. For African violets to fill the shady bald spots in our yard, for laundry detergent or lipstick or shoes. I don’t know exactly what she was looking for, but I wasn’t looking for anything in particular. Pointlessness was the point.
As a teenager, customers approached me with questions, and I had to tell them I didn’t work there. I did have a thrifted red polo shirt I wore a lot, sometimes with baggy tan cords and Vans. I dressed like a skater, even though I wasn’t one; I dressed like a Target employee, even though I wasn’t one. I didn’t carry a wallet or purse, or push a cart. I left those things to my mom. I roamed the aisles surveying the toys I’d outgrown and the dorm decor I hadn’t yet grown into. I wanted to go away to school, and I was terrified by the idea. I wanted to want it. In the meantime, Target was my home. Customers would have seen someone who looked completely comfortable and a little clueless, a combination that registered as “Target employee.”
In 1999, Target aired their “Sign of the Times” commercial. Hundreds of bullseyes became polka dot wallpaper, dress patterns, golf balls, and chess pieces against a backdrop of groovy music. Target became the cool person’s cheap store and the cheapo’s cool store. Design for the masses.
When I was in grad school in the early 2000s, my classmate Erik Snyder wrote an essay about Target, about how its orderly shelves and slick displays and bright lights gave him a sense of peace and order. Sometimes, he wrote, he just walked through the aisles with no intention to buy anything. The need and feeling he was describing were a kind of predecessor to something that is a known, if abstract, quality we search for now online. Organization videos on Instagram. ASMR videos. Pictures of art supplies arranged like puzzle pieces made of right angles. Vintage toys in rainbow order.
And Target is a mom thing, of course. Moms daydream about solo trips to Target. Moms make memes about Target: “I’m a stay-at-Target mom,” “You know you’re a mom when going shopping at Target by yourself feels like a vacation and going on a family vacation feels like work” (not wrong), “You don’t got to Target because you need something. You go to Target and let Target tell you what you need.”
We all know exactly what corporations are up to, the way they tap into the needs that our government and communities have ceded to them. And we all face the demands that government and communities have put on us: We are the stockers of pantries and the buyers of diapers. Our kids have a school project that requires pompoms and glitter, and it’s due tomorrow. So we go.
Target promised it had our backs. In June it sold T-shirts and wine and dog toys emblazoned with rainbows. Last February, I bought my toddler a Black pride T-shirt and an Afro-Unicorn T-shirt designed by Black artists.
But when Target faced a backlash to its Pride merch in 2023, Forbes published a sympathetic—to Target—article stating that “brands can’t win this one from a product and marketing perspective” and that, “While advocacy groups, like the [Human Rights Coalition], want to engage corporations to further their advocacy work, those groups don’t keep the business running.”
Brands can’t win, except they almost always do. If you don’t keep the business running, you are corporate cannon fodder.
In January, Target rolled back its Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion programs in response to an executive order by Donald Trump. Executive orders are not laws and cannot contradict existing laws. Preemptive compliance is kind of like turning in homework that hasn’t been assigned yet in a rush to be teacher’s pet.
A boycott ensued. I have my doubts about the efficacy of boycotts that aren’t extremely well organized or accompanied by other actions. Still, I tried to find sources for diapers and lightbulbs that were not Target or Amazon.
Trump and his cronies rampaged through the federal government like…toddlers tantruming at Target. Immigration, education, medical research, clean energy, free speech, foreign aid, trans rights—all were met with a resounding “NOOOOO!” and the not-quite-legislative equivalent of thrown dishes.
I used the handy 5 Calls app to call my representatives about all the things. Well, some of the things. I went to one protest. It made me feel a little bit better, like I was doing something.
When I felt scared about possible crackdowns on queer adoptive families, I comforted myself that I wasn’t doing much. I would probably, knock on wood, remain below the radar of anyone searching out dissidents. Was the best protection I could offer my family really my own lack of efficacy? Is this why, lately, I sometimes feel like I’m dying? I mean, I have never died before. I don’t know what it feels like.
I have spent my life from college onward unlearning the myths of America. I know, now, that slavery’s ghosts breathe hot and mean on the back of our necks. I know that Native American boarding schools stole children from their parents and their culture. I know that if a carton of eggs costs $20, it’s not because the Guatemalan teenagers trafficked to work at chicken farms are suddenly being paid a living wage.
And yet. There is always something new to grieve.
On a recent afternoon, I picked up Dash, my ten-year-old, from school and he said, “We have to go to Target and get Buldak spicy ramen!”
He tries very hard to like all the spicy, Target-red foods that are popular with kids: Hot Cheetos, Takis, Dinamita XXTRA Flamin’ Hot Doritos.
“We’re trying not to go to Target right now,” I reminded him as he buckled in, throwing his backpack on the floor of the car.
“Because they support Trump?”
I couldn’t remember, exactly. Did they actively support Trump, or had they “just” rolled back DEI? It is hard to chase corporations chasing the stances that will draw the most consumer dollars.
“Yeah,” I said. “Pretty much.”
“But I really want Buldak ramen. Abigail had it in her lunch today and I looooved it. We’re in the spicy ramen club. Maybe we can just not go to Target too much.”
And so I chose my kid’s social needs over my country’s and my community’s. We drove to Target, which didn’t even have Buldak in stock. We settled for another brand, plus a half gallon of oat milk and a pack of gum. The total was $8.06. Harm reduction is one of my main parenting strategies.
At home, I boiled water and added the block of dry noodles and half a packet of red powder.
Dash tasted it. Too spicy. I washed the noodles in cold water. Now they had only the essence of spice. That seemed like a metaphor, but I wasn’t sure for what.
I’ve been having trouble getting excited about the future. I miss what my therapist called “the manic optimism of youth.” Manic because the future was never going to be as good as I imagined it might be. I’ve been having trouble calibrating the present. Is this a nose dive or just really bad turbulence? Am I crying because I watched the video of pro-Palestine activist Mahmoud Khalil being illegally arrested as his pregnant wife’s desperate questions go unanswered? Am I crying because I have upcoming medical appointments and I hate medical appointments? Am I crying because I’m worried about the future of healthcare? What if I didn’t have medical appointments? Am I crying because my toddler is crying?
Erik, my classmate who wrote about the peaceful white glow of Target, died “in his home” at the age of 25, according to his 2003 obituary. I hadn’t been in recent touch with him. I think it must have been an overdose or suicide, or something in between. Whatever he was going through, going to Target and not buying anything, or going to Target and buying something, had not saved him.
But I think of him every time I go to Target. And I think of my mom. And I think of America. I miss them.
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