Retailers Drop Scout Dixon West’s Fragrances Following Controversy Over Offensive Social Media Posts
Retailers have dropped perfume TikToker and brand founder Scout Dixon West’s fragrances after old posts on the pandemic, weight and race from her X account began circulating on social media last week.
Arielle Shoshana, Ministry of Scent, Luckyscent and Indiehouse Modern Fragrances are retailers named in a post six days ago by a TikTok content creator under the handle leilainocentes as severing ties with the Scout Dixon West brand. In a thread on the platform Reddit about the Dixon West controversy, commenters additionally identify House of Sillage and Surrender To Chance as no longer selling Scout Dixon West products. Beauty Independent reached out to several of the retailers and Dixon West, and only heard back from Luckyscent, where Dixon West previously worked, by the time of publication.
“At Luckyscent, we do not remove brands from our catalog based on politics and believe everyone is entitled to their own political opinions. Scout Dixon West products are no longer available due to her use of derogatory language on social media,” says Luckyscent co-founder Franco Wright in an email to Beauty Independent. “Luckyscent does not condone hate in any form and endeavors to create an inclusive shopping experience for everyone.”
In the wake of presidential election, the retailers’ decisions to pull Scout Dixon West from their virtual and physical shelves come as anti-Donald Trump social media content creators and users are unearthing influencers and brands’ political allegiances, posts, messages and donations to call for people to unfollow or stop buying from Trump supporters. Dixon West’s old social media posts were thrust into the social media spotlight amid speculation about her support of Trump.
The posts were uploaded as early as 2020 and as recently as this year. One X post dated Feb. 12, 2021 reads, “Can everyone who’s gonna die from covid just die already so I can go to the movie theatre? Let’s get this show on the road.” Another posted on Feb. 5 last year reads, “If you’re fat, you better have BEEN fat. If you GOT fat, I don’t respect you.” In an X post from Feb. 20 this year, Dixon West reacts to a post about holding a cat’s ears back with a picture of a gremlin by mentioning it’s in “Chinese mode.”
@leilainocentes This is purely an informative post so PerfumeTok can make informed decisions as perfume consumers #fyp #greenscreen #scoutdixonwest #houseofsillage #perfumetiktok #perfumetok
West addresses the old posts in a TikTok video that went up Wednesday. In the video, she says, “Some people have made assumptions about who I am or my political leanings merely because they like me or they like my videos or there’s at least some small part of me that they resonate with and that must mean that I automatically fall in line with everything they feel and think and believe, not possible.”
Referring to the old X posts as “unhinged jokes,” Dixon West notes she’s being excoriated as a fascist, homophobe and bigot online. “Neither of these set of projections are rooted in any reality, not the positive ones, not the negative ones,” she says. “If you don’t know me, you don’t know me. There is no version of me that exists in your head that is an accurate representation of who I am.”
Scout West isn’t alone in getting caught in the post-presidential election boycott movement. Sephora has been the subject of boycott calls, too. On Sunday, a TikTok content creator with the handle karressmarie4 posted a video declaring Sephora made “BIG BIG BIG DONATIONS” to the Trump campaign. It’s received 1.9 million likes and over 14 million views. Sephora subsequently issued a statement calling the video “incorrect” and maintaining it doesn’t make corporate donations to political candidates.
The business impact of the latest calls for consumer boycotts isn’t certain, but researchers have discovered such boycotts generally have little impact and may lead to the reverse of the intended effect. In an article in the journal Marketing Science on Trump opponents boycotting Goya after CEO Robert Unanue praised Trump in 2020, professors Dana Tuchman, Jura Liaukonyte and Xinrong Zhu reveal data showing the boycott caused the bean brand’s sales to increase as Trump-supporting consumers flocked to it, although the effect didn’t last long.
On the other hand, the boycott of Bud Light last year sparked by the brand tapping trans influencer Dylan Mulvaney for a promotional campaign demonstrates consumers can imperil revenues if they speak out against a business and halt purchases of its merchandise. Bud Light lost billions of dollars in value largely as a result of retailers reducing its shelf space.
Responses to the Dixon West controversy have been mixed. “Please don’t stop creating masterpieces just because the snowflakes are offended,” one user wrote on her Instagram account on Oct. 31. “Can’t wait for the new scent ‘bankruptcy,’” another quipped. In Dixon West’s TikTok video on her old X posts, she concludes, “I am here to make and share beautiful things, that’s all. I’m going to continue to be exactly the person that I am, and you are free to interpret it however you see fit.”
Dixon West has 148,800 followers and 2.5 million likes on TikTok. She rose to prominence as the #perfumetok community on the platform grew with passionate fragrance aficionados. She’s known for evocative descriptions of fragrances and informative product reviews. On Sept. 13 this year, the Scout Dixon West brand launched with three fragrances priced at $175 each—El Dorado, Incarnate and Coney Island Baby—on its own website and the site of Ministry of Scent, which, in text that’s been removed, disclosed most of the fragrances sold out within a day.
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