Last week was Halloween, so you know today’s newsroom is going to be packed with all sorts of fun stories, starting with:
- Bar Refaeli Has Single Handedly Ended Female Oppression
Yes, this is a real ad. Yes, that is a white woman wearing a niqab and also tearing off said niqab to frolic around. A round of applause to Bar Refaeli for showing Muslim women that they don’t need to be oppressed, all they have to do is tear off their garb and run around. All jokes aside, it is very clear that no research or testing was done on this advertisement, which has rightfully caught a lot of backlash concerning the obvious Islamophobic overtones of the clip. (For those who don’t read Hebrew, the text at the beginning reads “Iran is Here?”)
- Megyn Kelly Opened Her Mouth Again
You’d think at some point someone would just take the microphone away from her. My question to her is, what neighborhood did she grow up in that made her think dressing in blackface was ever ok?? Also, to those out there that may be pondering on this, dressing up as someone from another culture will always be a caricature and will continue cycling the harmful stereotypes that the appropriated culture may face. There are ways to appreciate figures from other cultures without painting your body the color of their skin. This message has harmful consequences, particularly one in which a mother thought it was okay to send her nine year old son to school dressed as a slave.
- Just Stop White People 2k18
Teachers and faculty at an elementary school in Idaho thought it was a great idea to dress up as Mexican people and the border wall with MAGA written across it. These images were accessed via the schools facebook page, where they proudly posted them. Post-backlash, the images were taken down and replaced with an apology. Besides the pure awfulness of the costumes in general, this presents with a poor representation for the children they teach. After all, this was at a public school, and aren’t teachers supposed to keep their political and religious opinions to themselves?
At this point, is there any hope for the future? When the people who have been elected to hold office and make choices for us create policies that make it extremely difficult for the very people they represent to vote, it kind of takes the wind out of you. My question is, how do they get away with this, considering these strict voter laws are just 2018’s way of saying Jim Crow laws. Thankfully, this past election seems to have inspired more minority folks to run for office, so maybe there is some hope for the future.
Check this out: Hasan Minhaj’s new Netflix series, Patriot Act.
chat with you next time,
@notlikeothergirls
Featured photo credits to @viewsfromjay on Twitter.
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