The Barilla anti-gay controversy began in September 2013 when the company's chairman, Guido Barilla, stated in an interview that he would never feature a gay family in his brand’s advertisements, favoring the 'traditional' family model. He notoriously added that if the LGBTQ+ community did not like his stance, they could choose to eat another brand of pasta. This sparked an immediate international boycott and a massive wave of internet memes mocking the brand's exclusionary policy. While the company eventually underwent a significant transformation to improve its diversity and inclusion ratings, the incident remains a textbook example of corporate PR disasters, frequently referenced in online discussions about brand accountability and social progress.