For a lot of brands their most valuable customers are middle and upper class people, and their tastes tend to veer prudish/judgmental/conservative on these things. IE with the example of a kitchen appliance manufacturer, we think that’s a very popular/cross-class purchasing category, except for the fact that for tons of us our kitchen appliances are chosen for us by our landlords and among homeowners, the only ones who are regularly going out and swapping out their kitchen appliances are the well-off ones. LG’s best customers, and this is true of most businesses, are their rich customers.

For the most part, rich and affluent customers’ tastes count for more just because they can consume more, and many of the people in charge of advertising decisions at these companies are themselves middle or upper class, so it’s like a self-reinforcing ideological loop caused by structural economic inequality. The population at large’s opinion about whether shit like this even matters doesn’t really enter into the equation because what counts as “respectable” for companies is entirely decided on a per-dollar basis.