“Cultural appropriation” of a Chinese dress causes big kerfuffle

May 1, 2018 • 1:00 pm

Some people are permanently poised to be offended; in fact, you’d think they get pleasure out of being offended.

One of the topics that often triggers unwarranted offense is cultural appropriation—the adoption by one culture or ethnicity of food, clothing, music, or other aspects of a different culture.  In principle this could be offensive, as in the use of blackface, but more often than not it’s simply the appreciation by one culture of another. BuzzFeed (click on screenshot below) and other sites like the Washington Post and the BBC describe a particularly ridiculous example:

What happened is that 18 year old Keziah Daum, a high school student from Utah, decided to wear to her senior prom a quipao, or traditional Chinese dress with a high neckline and slit skirt. While this was worn in China (and still is by societies that try to preserve the dress style), it was really a form of women’s clothing invented in Shanghai in the 1920s and limited to wealthy socialites. Here, for example, is a quipao society I photographed in a mall in Macao on my last visit to Hong Kong:

Well, Ms. Daum made the deadly mistake of liking a quipao she saw in a Salt Lake City vintage clothing store, saying that she was “immediately drawn to the beautiful red grown and was thrilled to find a dress with a modest neckline.” She wore it to the prom and posted the following pictures on Twitter.

You can see the four sub-pictures by clicking on her tweet, but here are three of them. Daum looks lovely, though of course the last picture might be considered offensive by some. I don’t, as it’s not making fun of a culture but imitating (I think) a gesture thought to be Chinese (it’s also Indian, Nepalese, and used in many other countries):

 

Well, you can question the wisdom of the last photo, but believe me, this fracas would have happened had just the other pictures been posted. Sure enough, Jeremy Lam, a student at the University of Utah, took great offense and posted this tweet:

As you see, it got 17,000 comments and was retweeted 42,000 times. As you might expect, though Daum had her defenders, she only got those defenders because of the spate of people who called her out for “appropriating” a “traditional dress with a long history and making it into a fashion statement.” Well, the dress doesn’t have a long history, was limited to the upper classes, and is supposed to be a fashion statement. If the dress represents “Chinese culture”, it is only a very narrow segment of Chinese culture. (If a lower-class Chinese woman wore it, would that be considered “class appropriation”?).

Daum, as might be expected, was sandbagged, not expecting this at all, and was hurt. You can see all the negative and supportive comments at BuzzFeed (it turns out Jeremy Lam had engaged in even more impure forms of cultural appropriation in previous tweets.) But she even tried to be nice about it:

“I never imagined a simple rite of passage such as a prom would cause a discussion reaching many parts of the world,” Daum said. “Perhaps it is an important discussion we need to have.”

She said that she was sorry if she had caused any offense, and that her intent was never to anger anyone.

“I simply found a beautiful, modest gown and chose to wear it,” she said.

No, we don’t need to have a conversation about her wearing a quipao as a prom dress. It’s not insulting and wasn’t intended to be. It was the best kind of cultural appropriation: the adoption of some aspect of culture that you admire. Yes, we can and should talk about blackface, Mexican sombreros, and the like, but if we’re going to talk about cultural appropriation, how about this site, showing Asian workers adopting “dress-for-success” fashion, which happens to be Western? How about if we talk about the limits of “offensive” cultural appropriation?

Isn’t the picture above an example of cultural appropriation? If not, why not? After all, at least in the U.S. Asians enjoy a social and academic advantage over Caucasians; so if “punching down” is worse than “punching up”, Asians wearing Western suits would be the graver sin.

But this is all nonsense. Cultures intertwine and enrich each other; I can’t imagine the U.S. without the musical, culinary, linguistic, and artistic contributions of non-Caucasians (I won’t say “other cultures” because all of us descend from immigrants). We wouldn’t have the great musical form of jazz without the African-Americans who invented it, and yet its adoption by cultures worldwide occurred without the supposedly negative aspects of “cultural appropriation.” That’s another example of cross-fertilization of cultures.

Making a poor high school woman feel awful about her choice of dress is something that these misguided Social Justice Warriors like to do. It accomplishes nothing positive; all it does is make the “appropriators” feel bad and the puritans feel good about themselves. Can you tell me if anything positive came out of this?

 

h/t: Seth Andews

Is long hair on women superheroes sexist?

May 1, 2018 • 11:00 am

The latest episode of Pecksniff Syndrome on the Left is an article from racked.com, retweeted by the increasingly obnoxious site Vox below.

The premise of the article “Superheroes don’t wear ponytails, and yes, it’s sexist,” by Rebecca Jennings, who specializes in accusatory fluff, is that superhero women wear long hair rather then ponytails because it makes them look more feminine and sexy. Thus they cater to the males who (the article presumes) are the consumers of these comics and movies. Thus the lack of ponytails is a sexist trope

My emphasis in Jennings’s words below:

This Friday is the premiere of Avengers: Infinity War, a film so buzzy that it’s already broken presale records and is on track to become the biggest domestic box office opening in history. It combines characters from no fewer than 18 Marvel movies and an absolutely dizzying 76 superheroes and supporting characters, from Black Panther to Iron Man. But one thing you won’t be seeing a lot of? Hair ties.

. . . So why don’t Black Widow, Gamora, Scarlet Witch, and Mantis — and even superheroines beyond Infinity War, from Wonder Woman to Jessica Jones, Elektra, Storm, and She-Hulk — ever seem to take a second to throw their hair into a chic chignon (or, more likely, a half-assed messy bun like the rest of us do before an activity as simple as getting on the elliptical)?

The simplest answer is that comics are a visual medium, and a bunch of long, flowing hair swirling around during an already epic fight scene looks pretty cool. Camille Friend, the head of the hair departments for Marvel’s Black Panther, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2, and the upcoming Captain Marvel starring Brie Larson, pretty much confirms that that’s at least the way Hollywood sees it.

. . . But there’s a reason we don’t see many male superheroes with waist-long hair just so we can watch all that cool hair fly around. [JAC: See Grania’s counterexamples below.] Christina Dokou, an assistant professor of American literature and culture at the University of Athens, explains that the “boys’ club” legacy of comic books, in which female characters were stuck with sexist stereotypes, still endures. “Even today, the physical attributes and feminine beauty of superheroines are exaggerated to make them look like, well, frankly, porn stars at worst, and sexy female athletes at best,” she tells Racked over email.

But what about short-haired or shaved-headed superheroines like Tank Girl? The article says that this denotes either a “godlike mental ability” or “a precarious relationship with traditional femininity”, i.e., bisexuality or lesbianism.  I don’t know enough about Tank Girl to know if she was a lesbian (a cursory search says no), but author Jennings, who has a thesis to maintain, says that Tank Girl ” inspired weekly lesbian ‘Tank Girl nights’ in London.”

Since my knowledge of superhero movies and comics is nil, I turned to Grania, who told me the whole racked.com article was, frankly, authoritarian bullshit.  Her comments and counterexamples are indented below:

Women superheroes with ponytails:
Lara Croft in Tomb Raider:
Buffy the Vampire Slayer:
Felicity Smoak:
Zoë Washburne:

Although many others have their pony-tails in their “normal” disguise like Clark Kent wearing his glasses that get removed when he is Superman (e.g., Isis, who went incognito as the mousy academic Andrea Thomas). Nevertheless, many of them, even with long hair, have some sort of head-gear that keeps their hair off their face, like Cat Woman.

Isis in disguise:

Isis as hero (note hair band):
Cat Woman:
Some points:
1. This is the “I was born yesterday” approach to op eds: these kids literally don’t do any homework before they start writing, like the one who claimed the Murder On The Orient Express looked like it didn’t have enough Asian actors in it based on the poster, or the one that claimed that the new Star Trek series was the first one with a Person Of Color in the lead role (it wasn’t) or the first female captain (it wasn’t) or the first female lead (it wasn’t).
2. They fail to take into consideration that long hair on men is only a very recent trend. In the last few decades short hair was in fashion which is why superheroes were designed with short hair.
3. I concede that most young women’s hair on TV or in the movies is designed to be visually appealing rather than practical, regardless of what her role is. So are the young male actors, though. Hollywood mostly sells movie tickets based on looks, not on the gravitas of their actors.
4. Particularly in the superhero genre, the visual aesthetic is deliberate. That is why Superman is muscles, not beer belly.
5. I am putting up some male pics into your post.
And here are the long-haired male pictures with Grania’s comments:

Khal Drogo (Game of Thrones) did have a pony tail, but let’s face it, at that length he needed one to prevent tripping over it.

Thor headbutting and getting his do totally messed up because he didn’t have a pony tail.

Also sans ponytail, Qui-Gon Jinn. Actually, this may explain a lot of things.

Aquaman was also forced to endure a lack of a ponytail and a lack of clothes in an icy lake. For reasons of plot, of course.

Legolas managed to skate down stairs and impale an orc on an arrow, long locks notwithstanding.

Come to think of it, there was a lot of long hair in Lord of the Rings:

 

A Sam Winchester hair flick that was totally integral to the plot and not at all so that the audience could re-watch again and again in slow motion afterwards.

Q.E.D.

Facebook now asks if every post contains “hate speech”

May 1, 2018 • 10:20 am

UPDATE: After only an hour or two, Facebook has pulled the “hate speech” icons. What gives? Did we see a planned program rolled out accidentally? Or was it a trial that quickly went wrong? Who knows—it’s Facebook, Jake.

_______

Is this Facebook’s way of policing its site? Because if it is we’re all doomed.  As of this morning, every single post by every single person, public or privately posted, contains a box at the bottom asking if the post contains “hate speech”. It makes no difference whether the post is innocuous or inflammatory. Here’s my goose post as it appeared publicly on Facebook; check out the orange notification at the bottom:

Now who is going to check “no”? (You can even do that for your own posts.) The abuse will occur when people start checking yes for political or religious posts that aren’t “hate speech” but are critical of ideologies. (I anticipate that my weekly “Jesus and Mo” posts will be flagged for hate speech.)

And, of course, Facebook gives NO definition of “hate speech”.

We don’t even know if this is an experiment that will enable Facebook to determine what is considered “hate speech.” But if they can’t do that already, crowdsourcing the criteria is about the worst way of doing it.

Go home, Facebook: you’re drunk!

Geese and ducks!

May 1, 2018 • 9:00 am

Well, my latest working hypothesis is that the mallard hen Honey is holed up somewhere for a month (she disappeared around April 20), brooding her eggs, which have a gestation time of 28 days. Sir Francis is still holding down the pond awaiting her reappearance, and seems to largely ignore the geese, who eat grass and disdain the corn and peas that Frank gets (he doesn’t eat mealworms). Or so we can hope. I’ve had the pond water level lowered so the ducklings can have a place to rest.

In the meantime, the Canada geese 88K (female) and 92P (male) continue to brood their offspring. They’re allowing me to get quite close so long as I kneel down and remain still. Here are some shots from this morning when 88K was brooding her six goslings under her wings. They eventually woke up and the family begin grazing on the grass.  I’ll accept suggestions of names for this pair, though 88K and 92P have a good ring about them.

I’m told that the goose family was moved two days ago to the pond from the roof of the Chemistry Building (Searle), where they had nested. It’s five stories tall, so there was no way the goslings could get down on their own. Thus The Department of Natural Resources was called to move the family to Botany Pond. When I asked how this was done, I was told that they trapped the goslings and used them as bait to lure the parents to the pond.

Here are some photos:

88K brooding her young beneath her wings and body:

I know geese are noisy, aggressive, and poop all over the place, but I’m still bonding with them. They are, after all, wild birds like ducks, but evolved to behave differently. And they have not been aggressive toward me. Plus they’re beautiful. Here’s the male, who’s larger than his mate 88K. I feel sorry for the adults having to wear that stiff collar:

Goslings foraging. They’re eating only grass, though they’ll tentatively peck at the peas. That’s okay; I don’t want them to compete for food with Frank and Honey (if she returns):

To think these things grow up into those huge, aggressive birds!

We’ll have to report 92P to the feds so that Anna can get her Goose Spotting Certificate. Here’s his leg leg band that I photographed. Anna went to the pond with binocs this morning and read 92P’s number as 116819974. With both neck and leg numbers, that will get her a certificate for sure!

 

In which I get a personalized Facebook ad!

May 1, 2018 • 8:00 am

I’ve been complaining on my Facebook page about the volume of ads I get, and how I try to make them more infrequent by clicking on each one and saying “it’s not relevant to me.” My hope, which of course is futile, is that this will eventually eliminate the ads completely, since nothing will be seen as relevant to my interests. I know that this won’t work, but I have no choice.

In response, reader Joe McClain posted MY OWN PERSONAL FACEBOOK AD on my site—for a retirement community called “Old Feline-Atheist Retirement Towne”, abbreviated Olde Fart. (He’s from Williamsburg and uses colonial spelling.)

Now here’s a place I could live in my dotage! If only such a place existed. Baby lions and leopards on site!

Tuesday: Hili dialogue

May 1, 2018 • 7:15 am

It’s May! It’s May! The lusty month of May! (Tuesday, May 1, 2018). And here’s an appropriate song that you’ll know if you’re “of a certain age.” If you’re not, you should know it.

It’s also National Chocolate Parfait Day, as well as International Worker’s Day, celebrating the laboring folk. It was and is a huge holiday in the Soviet Union, but this tweet, from Grania, shows that not everyone was enthused:

But in 1886 in the U.S., it began a tradition:

On May 1, 301, Diocletian and Maximian retired for their office of co-Roman Emperor. On this day in 1169, Norman mercenaries landed in Leinster, which, according to Wikipedia, marks the beginning of the Norman Invasion of Ireland.  On May 1, 1328, the Wars of Scottish Independence ended as the Treaty of Edinburgh-Northampton recognized the Kingdom of Scotland as an independent state. But then, on the same day in 1707, the Kingdoms of England and Scotland joined to form the Kingdom of Great Britain.

On this day in 1753, Linnaeus published his catalogue Species Plantarum, marking the start of plant taxonomy as well as the Latin binomials which has become the modern convention of how to denote a species. Exactly 33 years later, Mozart’s opera The Marriage of Figaro had its debut in Vienna. On this day in 1863, the Battle of Chancellorsville began.  On May 1, 1930, Pluto was officially named as a planet. It still is one, and shut up if you disagree!  In 1948, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (North Korea) was established under the tyrannical rule of Kim Il-Sung, who is still considered “The Eternal President of North Korea”. Exactly 8 years later, after successful field trials, Jonas Salk made his polio vaccine available to the public. What a hero! Today they’d try to patent it.  On this day in 1960, in the famous U-2 incident, Francis Gary Powers of the U.S. was shot down in his U-2 spy plane, creating a huge fracas. He spent two years in a Russian prison and then was returned to the U.S. in a prisoner exchange, dying in a helicopter crash in 1977.  On May 1, 1999, the body of British Climber George Mallory was found on Mount Everest, 75 years after he and his co-climber Andrew Irvine disappeared on Mount Everest. There’s still debate about whether they reached the summit.  On this day 7 years ago, there were two incidents: Osama bin Laden was killed by U.S. Navy Seals, and Pope John Paul II was beatified in a rush job by his successor Benedict XVI.

Notable born on this day include Calamity Jane (1852), Theo van Gogh (1857), Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (1881), eviscerated by Peter Medawar, Glenn Ford (1916), Jack Paar (1918), Joseph Heller (1923), Judy Collins (1939), Rita Coolidge (1945), and photographer Sally Mann (1951). Those who died on May 1 include David Livingston (1873), Antonín Dvořák (1904), Joseph and Magda Goebells (1945, suicide in the Führerbunker), Spike Jones (1965), Eldridge Cleaver (1998) and Steve “Superman” Reeves (2000).

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili is using woo to prevent a failure of cherry maturation as happened last year. It’s a wonderful picture of Hili, too.

Leon: well, I’m setting of in search for May adventures.

In Polish: No to wyruszam na poszukiwanie majówkowych przygód.

Reader Dean sent a tweet (enlarge sign by going to the tweet and clicking on the right side) that shows a postmodernist message from a landlord about the absence of a fire extinguisher.

And from Ann German via Heather Hastie, an ancient cat is reassured by a modern one:

https://twitter.com/AwwwwCats/status/990605261877465088

From Grania, a splendid aerial view of Central Park:

The hyprocrisy of the rich:

Wonderful high-res photos of Andromeda:

https://twitter.com/WorldAndScience/status/991165423000391680

And another inappropriate use of cats in advertising (are the cats being bathed in cocoa?)

From Matthew; learn from Feynman how trains stay on tracks:

Nature red in tooth and claw—on two levels:

OMG: We have geese and goslings

April 30, 2018 • 2:30 pm

Well, the female 88K is back, and with her a new swain, 92P, and six goslings. Where did they come from? What do I do now? I know nothing of geese or how to tend them.

And of course Frank and Honey are gone, and won’t return with this crew around.

OMG. Well, I have to report 92P now, who must be a male.

88K was here a while back, and I reported her and got my Official Goose Spotter certificate. She must have been checking out the place in early April.

I’ll try to feed them now. . . .