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When I first saw this Target commercial last month for The Honey Pot, I felt such a sense of pride.

Hearing it’s founder, Bea Dixon, talk about her super popular plant-based feminine hygiene line and how having her products in a store like Target can inspire a new generation of Black girls reminded me of that phrase “in order to be it, you need to see it.”

“The reason why it’s so important for Honey Pot to do well is so the next black girl that comes up with a great idea, she could have a better opportunity. That means a lot to me,” Dixon says at the end of the commercial.

Now imagine being so miserable that when you see that commercial you are filled with rage? Or hearing a Black woman, with a company that had $20 million in sales last year, hopes she can inspire the next generation of Black girls forces you that you have to inundate websites with negative reviews? You’d really have to be a complete self-absorbed racist jerk who hates to see Black joy.

Yet, here we are because it appears that some white women refuse to let Dixon be great and are calling her racist. Mind you, these ads ran all throughout February for Black History Month and now, all of a sudden, it’s an issue now that Women’s History Month is upon us. According to Fast Company, folks started to notice that trolls had flocked to Trustpilot to let their hate shine through.

“I can’t support a company in good faith that is openly racist about their customers,” one review on Trustpilot, a customer review website, said.

“Black girls are empowered using this product… I guess whites girls aren’t. I’ll be letting Target know about this racist company,” another review said.

But here’s the good news. Even in all that hate, according to BuzzFeed News, Dixon is still coming out on top. She says sales are up 40-50 percent this week from a regular day of sales, which we assume has a lot to do with Black women stepping up and defending Dixon and her products online.

 

GET ‘EM SIS!

In addition, Dixon told Essence she has “a lot of gratitude” for the sistas showing her love and doesn’t regret anything she said in the commercial.

“I wasn’t necessarily blindsided [by the negative reactions], but I also didn’t have an expectation,” said Dixon, sounding calm and unbothered as always. “This was not Honey Pot’s commercial, it was Target’s commercial. It was shot during Black History Month and for Women’s History Month. They chose that particular clip for a reason. I’m here for that story and that’s why I said it. I know that there’s a huge disparity when you look at the funding of businesses. I’m always going to be a proponent of us doing what we have to do so this isn’t even a conversation. The only thing we as Black women business owners can do is make really successful businesses.”

She also told BuzzFeed that she never said her products were only for Black girls.

“I said nothing about our product being only for black girls,” she said, citing the company’s tagline, which says it is “made by humans with vaginas, for humans with vaginas.”

See, this is what unbossed and unbothered looks like. Thank you, next?

Learn more about Honey Pot products here

 

Hi Haters! The Honey Pot Owner Says Sales Are Up 50 Percent Since Trolls Called Her ‘Racist’  was originally published on hellobeautiful.com