RACIST LINGERIE? Cosmopolitan Lashes Out at Victoria’s Secret
EVERYTHING IS RACIST!
Cosmopolitan writer Helin Jung wrote that Victoria’s Secret has developed racist lingerie for its annual fashion show. Yes, apparently lingerie can be racist:
None of that even sounds nice, but if it does, don’t let yourself be hoodwinked by Victoria’s Secret’s brazen attempt to re-label what is clearly cultural appropriation by turning it into a celebration of “culture.” The brand and its creative leads shamelessly cherry-picked imagery, breaking apart aesthetic references from wherever they wanted and stitching them back together again. They’re telling us it’s worldliness. It’s not, it’s a hack job.
As Emily Zanotti at Heat Street points out, when anyone tries to celebrate culture, people will greet it “with charges of bigotry.”
The first segment called “The Road Ahead” wanted to showcase different cultures around the world, featuring items designed from the people the theme wants to celebrate:
Arpana Rayamajhi, a Nepalese jewelry designer based in New York City, described the theme this way: She said, “The idea is that you’re blending little bits of this and that from all cultures around the world.” Rayamajhi created much of the handmade jewelry for the segment; the jewelry included silk threads turned into tassels, coins from Nepal, and beads — “a huge part of my culture.”
For some reason, Jung cannot stand this. She also found it disturbing that the company used “strips of culture” in its designs, “inspired by the likes of Peruvian, Mexican, and Chinese design.” Jung continued:
Collection creative director Sophia Neophitou described the hand-painted fabrics used in this segment by saying, “It’s meant to be this naive, homespun … but this is so luxurious.”
It doesn’t get much more patronizing than that, does it? The original version is made by simple people (“naive”) who make crafts (“homespun”), and it’s Victoria’s Secret that can elevate the primitive to something more “luxurious.” What would be the point of the corporation’s untold resources and unparalleled knowledge of world cultures if it couldn’t do that?
Nope. To Jung, all of this is another way for the Western world to show hatred towards other cultures. It is another way for the Western world to profit off of others.
Look, social justice warriors, you can’t have it both ways. You cannot complain about a lack of diversity or that others do not care about other cultures and then bitch when a company does exactly that:
With its positive, pre-emptive spin about globalization and multi-culturalism, Victoria’s Secret seems to have anticipated my response. The brand is leading with the notion that we’re all members of the human race, therefore everything belongs to everyone. But this is exceptional disingenuousness coming from a brand that once put Karlie Kloss in a Native American war bonnet and leopard print underwear. The fact is that even as the world gets more connected, a sexist, patriarchal, mostly white corporation continues to take what it wants for its own gain. Its exploitation of these cultural references is meant to lead directly to profits. And I’m not buying it.
So where does it stop? It’s a no win situation when it comes to these social justice warriors who want to find fault in everything they see. The warriors complain about a lack of diversity, but when a company decides to make diversity a theme the warriors claim racism.
I admit I had a hard time writing this post because I could hardly find the words to express the weirdness in Jung’s train of thought.
But will the warriors ever learn to take it easy and stop taking everything so seriously?
DONATE
Donations tax deductible
to the full extent allowed by law.
Comments
This while cultural appropriation thing is becoming a real bore.
All those people who make their living by being outraged at racism are in a world of hurt because the pettiness of their complaints indicate that racism really isn’t all that big a problem these days – at least not here in the west. They are outraged that their lunch train might be ending.
Watching the vid, I must confess I wasn’t exactly thinking about culture. Is this wrong?
I don’t care what Cosmopolitan thinks about my clothing choices for posting.
“I admit I had a hard time writing this post because I could hardly find the words to express the weirdness in Jung’s train of thought.”
Objection your honor. Assuming facts not in evidence. Nothing in the presentation suggests that there is any “thought” at all involved.
So with all the talk of racism in the costumes of a lingerie show, does this mean we are “over” the blatant objectification of attractive women, and it’s O.K. to do that now?
Inquiring minds want to know! 😉
What I want to know is whether the writer of this bit of fluff is Jewish or Southern Baptist.
If she’s Jewish, she got it from all the many exaggerations of numbers that are indulged in the teaching of the Torah, wherein the number of plagues visited on the Egyptians gets multiplied based on silly excuses.
If she’s Southern Baptist, she got it from the way they love to exaggerate sins, finding sin in progressively more innocent activities, so that the prohibition against extramarital sex eventually dwindles to …. dancing.
Either way, none of this is to be taken seriously.
Funny that this post is right below one about a beaver.
Unfortunately, there is some racism in our society. Petty charges about the most inane, silly things degrades and impairs real progress.
By now, the race card is way over limit!
Standard Las Vegas show girl costumes are a culture???
One of the goals of identity politics is to insure that everybody is divided into one or another group of (something or other) – Americans. This, of course, means the shutting down of the American Melting Pot of peoples.
Cultural appropriation, which goes back to America’s colonial days, is the first stage of the blending and therefore must be stopped at all costs.
Either that, or it’s just another synthetic excuse to grouse.
Looks like Cosmo has scrubbed this piece hoping it goes away. Little Miss Sunshine might be heading for her safe space permanently after this gem.
Cultural appropriation is such a farce! Just look at the food on our tables – worldwide. We’re all going to give up our holiday turkeys because those come from Mayan culture? No more take out Chinese? Close all the sushi bars?
Bunk and hokum!
It’s OK to eat food from a non-white culture, but it must be prepared by a chef of the appropriate ethnicity (or at least by someone non-white). Only the preparation of such food by a white person is “appropriation.” (Note that non-whites can’t be accused of appropriating from other non-white cultures. Like racism, it is not possible for non-white people to wrongly appropriate the culture of any other peoples.)
And the effort to devalue the charge of racism continues apace.
Claims of racism have been so abused that they have nearly no meaning today. Crying wolf too often have consequences.
I
Have
No
Words
When everything is racism, nothing is. The word has become devoid of meaning due to overuse.
To SJWs, the proclamation that everything is racist is the realization of ultimate truth. We understand they’ve rendered the term meaningless. They think they are exploring the furthest limits of actual racism.
I’m just confused …