Yes. It happened to me. I made international news. They talked about it on the Today Show. National radio talk shows hounded me for interviews. A woman wrote me (actually a lot of women wrote, but this stood out) that she hoped I’d have my arms and legs ripped off. What caused such a firestorm? A funny onesie. I’d never gotten bad press before, much less ferociously attacked. Hilariously, it had always been way the opposite. At the time, no one really knew what to do when something as extreme as this happened to them. There was no guidebook. As far as I know, there still isn’t. So I’m going to walk you through what we did when the world decided to hate us. If it ever happens to you, at least you’ll have some idea of what you can do.

Welp, this is it. This is the funny onesie that brought an international troll army to our door. — **Welp, this is it.** This is the funny onesie that brought an international troll army to our door.

Let’s back up for a sec. In 2000, a small company called Wrybaby started the funny onesie category. Seriously, back then, the novelty onesie DIDN’T EXIST. I can say this with confidence, because my wife and I started Wrybaby when our son was born. Kelly and I agreed that, through humor, we’d reflect the new parent experience in a way that was 100% true, and 100% funny instead of kind of terrifying. What we made was irreverent, but not vile. It was unconventional, but served our mission. We made hipster baby gifts before our community labeled them as such.

We started with a few designs and suddenly, in 2001, it all went crazy. Wrybaby products were featured in Time Magazine, Newsweek, USA Today…it was bananas. And it stayed bananas for years. Hell, Neil Patrick Harris and his husband introduced their new twins to the world in People Magazine wearing our onesies. Then he showed his babies wearing our super hero onesies on Live with Regis and Kelly. NPH likes us (and we love him right back)! Hahaha.

So’s you have an idea of the kind of stuff wrybaby makes, here are some of 2015’s best-selling funny onesies. Heck, a few are STILL best-sellers. We also had some adorable plush and kid’s backpacks in addition to the world’s first Super Hero onesies. — **So’s you have an idea** of the kind of stuff wrybaby makes, here are some of 2015’s best-selling funny onesies. Heck, a few are STILL best-sellers. We also had some adorable plush and kid’s backpacks in addition to the world’s first Super Hero onesies.

Not to brag, but this is just a tiny sampling of the kind of press we were used to getting over the last 15 years. People who found our stuff, liked our stuff. It was that simple. That InStyle Magazine page? That’s our Wheel of Responsibility in Chr… — **Not to brag, but this is just a tiny sampling** of the kind of press we were used to getting over the last 15 years. People who found our stuff, liked our stuff. It was that simple. That InStyle Magazine page? That’s our Wheel of Responsibility in Christina Aguilera’s kitchen. I can’t even remember how we found out about that.

In 2013, we introduced a new baby bodysuit with a graphic that said “Love Me for My Legrolls”. It sold pretty well. Because what’s the best thing about babies? Smell, cuteness, and all that plumpy goodness. At Wrybaby, we change up our funny onesie offerings every year, and in 2015 we introduced a another poke at the healthy baby’s cherubic condition – but with an ironic twist. It simply read, “I Hate My Thighs”. And, sorry if I’m treating you like an idiot, but here’s the definition of irony – Happening in the opposite way to what is expected, and typically causing wry amusement because of this. My fucking company’s name is literally in the definition of irony! So it was a complete surprise when, for the first time ever, our Facebook page started getting a lot of negative comments. Then a lot of threatening comments. Everyone in our office was freaking out so I tracked down the source. It was a shitpost on Ms. Magazine’s website, authored by their senior editor, no less.

I found that Ms. had a fun little hate segment on their blog called, “We Spleen”. Get it? Don’t feel bad if you didn’t. It’s their clever flip on “I Heart”. Anyway, it’s a page where they trash things they disagree with and then encourage their readers to pile on and troll the hell out of whoever was responsible. Titled Baby Fat-Shaming, they admit right off the bat that “Yes, we know it’s supposed to be funny.” but then postulates that our funny onesie would become a “harbinger of things to come later in a child’s life”. Hilariously, the author spends some time not understanding irony by explaining that “babies’ delightfully chunky baby thighs are some of the most lovable things in the world!” Mm-hm and duh. In the end she asks her readers if she’s “taking it too seriously.” Which was interesting. Because folks who think something is bullshit (and there were many in the article’s comments) don’t waste their time telling all their friends all about it. Because, well, it’s bullshit. And, to be honest, it probably would have quietly blown over in a week if we didn’t do what we did next.

On the left, the Ms. Magazine article. Upper right, the Senior Editor’s Facebook post promoting it to her troll army. Bottom right, our response and her request to divert our donation to her magazine rather than the non-profit created by Ms. Magazin… — **On the left, the Ms. Magazine article.** Upper right, the Senior Editor’s Facebook post promoting it to her troll army. Bottom right, our response and her request to divert our donation to her magazine rather than the non-profit created by Ms. Magazine.

Put yourself in our shoes. What would you have done? We weren’t going to take the onesie down. Even if we took it off our website, we were selling to boutiques around the world and “I Hate My Thighs” was a favorite among them and customers who’d already purchased it. So the design would still exist in the world. Besides, we thought the author’s assessment, and her minions’ opinions, were not only wrong, but designed to intentionally stir up trouble. So that ruled out an apology, too. Fuck that.

That leaves defending yourself. But how, when you don’t really feel like you have to? The author herself actually gave us the way forward when she opened it up to her readers. We’d do the same thing. But not the way they’d ever expect us to. Here’s a step-by-step guide to how we fought back.

Step 1. Take a Deep Breath and Be Realistic.

C’mon. It’s the tiniest of companies selling the nichiest of products to an even nichier audience against an historic publication with a fervent audience. It was stupid to think we’d ever “win” anything. And what was winning anyway? That’s the first question you need to ask yourself. What’s in it for YOU? What would make it worth it? Can you strengthen customer loyalty? Can you make money from this? Can you get a lot of exposure? Free press? We decided on all of the above and made a plan to push the conversation in that direction.

Step 2. Turn the Tables.

Near the end of the article, the author took a small break from hating on our “I Hate My Thighs” onesie to muse about how much better it would have been if it said, “I Love My Thighs”. If you remember, we had done that two years earlier with “Love Me for My Leg Rolls”, which is on brand, funny. So we brought it out of retirement. As much as she had conjured up an affront to women from our irony, we manufactured a challenge out of her criticism. In about three hours we implemented a popularity contest between “I Hate My Thighs” and “Love Me for My Leg Rolls” on wrybaby.com. After all, Ms. had suggested an alternative. We’d let consumers use their dollars to decide which graphic should remain, and we would donate all proceeds to the Ms. Foundation for Women. We even had the balls to call the whole thing “The Ms. Magazine Challenge”. Hahaha. And to be honest, this is why it took off internationally. We made a contest out of controversy and the press LOVED IT.

Step 3. Protect Your Core.

At this time, Wrybaby was about 70% wholesale with boutiques all over the world. So we called every store that stocked “I Hate My Thighs” to explain what happened and what we were going to do. We told them it would probably get messy and if they wanted to avoid the drama, they could exchange their “I Hate My Thighs” onesies and we’d pay for the shipping. I don’t know what we were expecting, but it sure wasn’t 100% support. Heck, more than a few stores even put them in their front windows instead of taking them off the floor. I love our boutiques.

Step 4. Punch Your Bully in the Throat When They Think They’ve Won.

Once the challenge was all set up on wrybaby.com and the stores were notified, we hit back. Hard. Oh, not on our socials where we’d hopefully garner some support. Like I said before, people who support you, will. And plenty did. But not as vociferously and viscerally as the people piling on the hate. Which is totally understandable, because who’s got time to throw a ton of energy into fighting a ton of crazy people for a small funny onesie company you happen to like? Our strategy was to catch the hate early and attack it at the source. So we hit back in the Ms. Magazine article’s comments. That way, we’d have a permanent record of OUR narrative to fall back on if need be. You’ll see what I mean in Step 6. I still think our response was appropriately shitty at the top and hilariously enthusiastic at the end when we flipped the script. Believe me, it was so hard to take the emotion out and leave all the spite in.

This was our giant home page graphic announcing our Ms. Magazine challenge. A lot of articles, like this quote from Redbook, claimed that this was all some kind of PR stunt that we orchestrated. Which says a lot to validate our response. Once it was… — **This was our giant** home page graphic announcing our Ms. Magazine challenge. A lot of articles, like this quote from Redbook, claimed that this was all some kind of PR stunt that we orchestrated. Which says a lot to validate our response. Once it was on the Today Show, publications everywhere started holding their own polls to see which onesie people preferred. My favorite was on PopSugar’s website where you checked a box to vote and there was only one reply under it that said, “Where’s the box marked, “*Who Cares?*” My sentiment exactly.

Step 5. Stay in the Fight.

This kind of thing is both emotionally and physically exhausting. But it’s also oddly exhilarating. We kept our eyes on the article comments as well as on the response to our Ms. Magazine Challenge, while our hands were busy responding to social media comments. We were replying to EVERYTHING and EVERYONE directing them to our onesie challenge on wrybaby.com. We were posting to our followers to enlist their help. We launched carefully crafted emails to our giant list. Eventually, as the story was picked up everywhere, we had to cover all that ground, too. We threw everything at the challenge.

Step 6. Avoid Traps While Capitalizing on Mistakes.

Things quickly escalated to the point where we started getting calls from radio stations across the country. One producer wanted us to go on-air with a child psychologist. Um. No. Hahaha. Pick your battles, friends. Speaking of which, we apparently irked Ms.’ Senior Editor because she sought the last word at the end of day one with a snarky comment to her article requesting we send the challenge donations to Ms. Magazine itself instead a non-profit. How bizarre is that? Why would the Senior Editor of Ms. Magazine publicly divert donations away from the non-profit foundation they originally created? So we called her out on it in the comments. Hahahaha! She later replied at length, clearly exasperated at finding herself on the ropes in the fight she herself started.

In regards to Step 6, I’m sure the author never thought she’d be defending herself to her own shitpost comments section. Hahaha — **In regards to Step 6,** I’m sure the author never thought she’d be defending herself to her own shitpost comments section. Hahaha

Step 7. Record Everything and Promote Your Vindication.

Eventually we stopped getting calls from local radio shows and started showing up on the Today Show, the Chicago Tribune, E online, MSN Lifestyle, UK’s Daily Mail, Comedy Central, Redbook, Cosmo… so many places! We promoted the exposure that was in our favor while directing everything to the onesie challenge. Hell, we were only an office of three people, so it was all we could do to manage this shitshow AND run our business. Despite the chaos, I recorded, snapshotted, and saved as much as I could. I felt like, when it was all said and done, it’d be helpful to have some proof that what happened, actually happened (I get to that at the end).

Step 8. Follow Through.

Look, enough is enough and we had a business to run. A week after all this started we announced the results of the Ms. Magazine challenge. Again, in the original article’s comment section. We recapped our narrative of the incident before declaring “Love Me For My Leg Rolls” the winner with 71% of the sales. And, true to our word, we retired not the offending onesie, but the ironic onesie – “I Hate My Thighs”. (Truth be told, we actually sold out of them). Then we followed through with our insistence on donating to the Ms. Foundation and reminded the senior editor and her readers what their mission was before thanking them all for the opportunity to engage with them. See? That’s how to be shitty and classy at the same time.

Our last word on the subject was somehow both positive and full of bile. The senior editor later responded with a seething checklist of “facts” about how we misrepresented her shitty article but by that time no one was really paying attention anymor… — Our last word on the subject was somehow both positive and full of bile. The senior editor later responded with a seething checklist of “facts” about how we misrepresented her shitty article but by that time no one was really paying attention anymore.

So what happened in the end? Well, it didn’t wrap up as tidily as our onesie challenge. Even when the story eventually died out, wrybaby kept getting hassled by crazy people on Facebook for about a year and a half. Way longer than we thought. And then, some misguided social justice warrior was triggered by our Super Snapsuits, of all things. Two onesies with capes. One read “I’m Super” on the front, the other read, “Super Cute”. He posted a photo of our Super Snapsuits on display in the NYU Bookstore and falsely claimed that the blue one was marked for “boys” while the other was marked for “girls”. And then he said something like “isn’t it a tragedy that girls have to be just “Super Cute”? First of all, we don’t mark gender on anything. And secondly, doesn’t he know that Super Girl wears blue and red? Ugh. Whatever. By this time, we were honestly too tired to fight it. Besides, it was a single jerk, not an actual publication. We couldn’t forge a monetary or PR reason to fight, so we let it go and endured crazy people’s death threats for another 6 months. It was actually more sad and irritating than disruptive.

Today you can still find dusty old archival posts about our Ms. Magazine experience from publications all over the world. But what’s most interesting is how the original article was preserved at the source. It now boldly declares victory at the top – “UPDATE: Wry Baby has taken its “I Hate My Thighs” snapsuit off its website in response to the uproar caused by the following Ms. Blog post!” All the comments are wiped clean, including those from the folks who supported us and our good fight back. There’s a link now at the end of the article directing you to buy feminist onesies in their own Ms. store. Which is why you need to record this stuff as it’s happening. You may want to use it someday.

And what happened to Wrybaby? Believe it or not, that whole Ms. Magazine shitshow actually didn’t do THAT much in sales despite the crazy exposure. Which is something to consider if you think (or your client thinks) the road to riches could be paved in hate mail. It isn’t. Would I do it again? Hell yes. But in the long run, it’s always best to run your business for the folks who get it and appreciate it. Those good people are your people. They’ll support you longer and recommend you more wholeheartedly than any flighty trend hunter or thrill seeker ever will. So keep those guys happy! That’s what we’re still doing at Wrybaby. And between you and me, I heard they might bring back “I Hate My Thighs” soon. ;-)