M&M's Spokescandies Have Decided to Become More Inclusive
Following public outcry surrounding criticism of recent M&M's spokescandy media coverage, Mars Wrigley has come to the conclusion that we are not wholly meeting the needs of the people.
While there has been a white M&M for a very long time, white M&Ms have so far been denied a voice among our diverse panel of spokescandies. In a campaign that merely strives to lift up identities that remain historically underserved and underrepresented, we acknowledge an unintended polarizing effect that perpetuates the coded classism and media alienation dividing working and middle class people.
Meet Shelby, a white, working class M&M who is unaware that his oppression is in part perpetuated by the very conservative values he espouses. Despite his sometimes psychologically unsafe interactions with other spokescandies, ranging from dated epithets, microaggressions, and an indoctrinated revulsion towards anything that falls outside narrowly prescribed identities constructed to extract mass obedience and productivity in service of the ruling class, Shelby contains at his core a sweet candy goodness that is ultimately a metaphor for human goodness.
Like all M&M’s spokescandies, Shelby, too, melts in the mouth, not in the hand, and yet is far from perfect. After an especially long and stressful work week concluding in a fight with his girlfriend over who will pay for groceries, Shelby accuses Green M&M of corroding the traditional marriage bond by wearing gender neutral shoes intended to implant thoughts of butch lesbian porn into his mind through subliminal messaging. He makes the point that while he may be a white cisgendered male M&M, he is a context minority in the spokescandy workplace. Frustrated, Red M&M informs Shelby of the Tuskegee Experiment, in which the United States subjected Black prisoners to non-consensual medical experiments resulting in unnecessary death. Purple M&M piggybacks off of this by educating Shelby about the massacre on Black Wall Street, and the countless hours of unpaid emotional labor oppressed people must continually perform to ensure their history, equality, and human rights are not erased—and that this labor inadvertently achieves improved human and workers rights for all. Shelby, feeling de-centered, discombobulated, and attacked, but also newly enlightened, retreats to the M&M's factory to think. It is here that, gazing over the conveyor belts of fresh M&M's candies born everyday by the truckload, Shelby has the epiphany that also becomes his catch phrase: “All M&M’s are chocolate on the inside.”
Shelby’s slogan, if problematic in the long term, opens the conversation up to accessible concepts of intersectionality. For instance—all M&M’s are chocolate on the inside, but some also contain puffed rice, coconut, white chocolate, crunchy cookie, almond, pretzel, or the ever popular peanut. Shelby is inspired to take a DNA test and, though pretty certain he is 100% original M&M, uncovers that he may contain traces of tree nuts.
After more research, Shelby learns that all M&M’s, most candies, and food items in general, may have been exposed to tree nuts. Humbled and comforted by his newfound interconnectedness across a vast, unknowable universe, Shelby shares his personal story—the silent desperation of his father struggling to provide for the family; the economic shame he internalized as a child; always falling short of his community’s religious ideals; the guilt of never being able to give his mother the life she deserved—and the other spokescandies hold space for Shelby in all his complexity, exchanging stories that reveal similar struggles and instructive differences. Green M&M explains that when an M&M wears shoes that aren’t traditionally associated with perceived gender roles, it is not a true threat to anyone, and that some M&M’s find this more attractive and enjoyable, or perhaps are simply experimenting with a new outfit. More important than clothing, they, as spokescandies, are privileged in their position and must use their privilege to help fight for the freedom and rights of all in this brief glimmer of opportunity, for no matter how rich and famous a spokescandy becomes, the majority of the world’s M&M’s are getting churned out at the factory, shipped to a store, and chomped by the fistful down the esophagus of some sticky middle schooler.
The spokescandies take Shelby on a pilgrimage to the tree nut orchard, and together they dance among the branches and connect with their ancestral plentitude. Hand in hand, the spokescandies encircle the tree nut tree, realizing that what unites them is stronger than what divides them. Long into the night, they cavort in unceasing revelry. Vials of psilocybin microdose circulate. Orange M&M emphasizes that this is a minimal starter dose, microdosing is not supposed to produce a high, and that the vials are a gift from a Mars Wrigley executive who is friends with highly credible clinical trial researchers. Yellow M&M murmurs that they should all journal their experiences in the morning. The fire pit burns to an ember. The uproarious flailing recedes to slow, rhythmic swaying. One by one, the eyes of the spokescandies meet in silent agreement that yes, they are here to celebrate, but also, to gather strength for what will come. Each upon their own patch of earth, eyes tilted upward as if drinking new wisdom from the night sky, the spokescandies draw a breath before what, Brown M&M whispers, will be known as “The great and glorious evolution.”