Watch your Eggnog. Bloomingdale’s is here.

“Spike your best friend’s egg when they’re not looking.”

What were you looking for from your best friend during this winter holiday season, Bloomingdale’s?

On November 10, last Tuesday, an Imgur user posted a photo of an ad from Bloomingdale’s new holiday catalog. This ad was not your just ordinary sparkly holiday fashion ad that you would see in major upscale department stores, and that is troublesomely suggestive of a date rape. The department store’s ad shows two well-dressed, heterogeneous models in classic holiday attire by Rebecca Minkoff. The female model is smiling and laughing big facing on her right, while the male model is posing, but staring at her other side. In between them, the advertisement reads “Spike your best friend’s egg when they’re not looking,” with a bold “BEST FRIEND’S.” What does that mean? Since when did the eggnog season became a date rape season? Since when did best friends “spiking” each other’s drinks? Does Rebecca Minkoff’s brand image suggest you to do illegal things on people’s drinks?

There are so many disgusting manners portrayed in this expensive printed fashion catalog page from the American high-end department store. Many viewers and readers of the catalog were outraged when they saw it. Later, after it went all viral, the department tweets their apology:

You “heard” people’s feedback? Why do you need public’s feedback to realize this is inappropriate? Maybe you should have noticed much earlier what went wrong in your major holiday shopping catalog before it went to print? What was Bloomingdale’s catalog editor smoking? Did Bloomingdale’s think that quote would be treated as a joke? In what mindset do people have to be to make this kind of joke for the holiday season? A dark and sarcastic one? I do not see any connection between drugging your best friend and having a nice holiday remark for this or any year!

The department store made such an unacceptable move on both having a repugnant taste of joke and wrong way of apologizing what they have done. They were clearly suggesting such an obnoxious and creepy portrait to celebrate holidays with people, and even just in society, harassing feminism (which you clearly can see this joke was directed on the female model in the ad). And they thought publicly posting up their “sincere apology” on Twitter would do for people who already received the catalog and are in shock. I wonder how people would encounter such distasteful behavior that Bloomingdale’s have performed to public.