{"id":45848,"date":"2018-05-03T22:16:18","date_gmt":"2018-05-04T02:16:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/totfc.net\/?p=45848"},"modified":"2020-08-06T22:16:28","modified_gmt":"2020-08-07T02:16:28","slug":"whats-not-racist-versus-what-is","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/totfc.net\/?p=45848","title":{"rendered":"What\u2019s not racist versus what is"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/span><\/p>\n

It\u2019s amazing the lengths that people go out of their way these days for in order to pretend like they\u2019re offended so that they can have a reason to bitch about something on social media with hopes that they\u2019ll go viral and get 15 seconds of internet fame. \u00a0This week\u2019s staged offense<\/a> is a story about a girl in Utah who went to her high school prom wearing a Chinese qipao dress; it doesn\u2019t sound like a big deal at all, but the thing is that the girl wasn\u2019t Chinese or any sort of Asian descent, and suddenly she\u2019s a racist, she\u2019s culturally appropriating, and she\u2019s offending many, many people.<\/span><\/p>\n

Speaking as an Asian person, I\u2019ll say this: a not-Chinese person wearing a qipao is NOT racist<\/strong>.\u00a0 Period, full stop.<\/span><\/p>\n

It also isn\u2019t cultural appropriation, which honestly shouldn\u2019t really exist in terms of clothing, because if the whole world wanted to get technical, it would be quite the contrary and the vast majority of the planet would be appropriating clothing that was manufactured probably in China, India, Pakistan, Vietnam or any other country where cheap, slave-wage labor is available.\u00a0 If place of origin is what decides what culture clothing belongs to, then just about every American is culturally appropriating someone else\u2019s clothing.<\/span><\/p>\n

And historically, there have been litanies of women who have worn qipaos or other traditional Chinese garments who weren\u2019t Chinese.\u00a0 Whether they were celebrities or dignitaries from other countries visiting China, or expats living in China who eventually starting wearing local clothing out of convenience.\u00a0 There is zero difference between people like these and a teenage girl wearing a qipao for her prom.\u00a0 She\u2019s in fact pretty and wears it well, and the Chinese originators of the garment would probably be proud to see it being worn to a meaningful event like a teenager\u2019s prom by someone who claims to really love it.<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

The outrage directed to this girl solely wearing the dress while not being Chinese is 100% unwarranted.\u00a0 Such is entirely people looking for a reason to be offended, and anyone who used that as motivation to send her nasty tweets and messages needs to reevaluate their lives and most importantly, grow up.<\/span><\/p>\n

However, the defense of the teen stops here, because teenagers are mostly completely incapable of not eventually sticking their feet into their own mouths.\u00a0 Because although not-Chinese girl wearing qipao isn\u2019t racist, the group pose (above) with her shockingly-even-for-Utah all-white prom party, well, now, yeah that\u2019s kind of racist. All the bros appear to be doing the Barstool Sports<\/a> hand sign which, as a closet Stoolie, I can appreciate, but all of the girls are most certainly, whether they realize it or not, mocking a very stereotypical rove-u-rong-time kind of subservient Chinawoman pose.\u00a0 Or pretending to be Chun-Li<\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n

The best part is that the teen\u2019s mom tries to come to the defense<\/a> of her daughter and all her lily-white passively ignorant racist friends, and tries to explain that the pose is something that some YouTube \u201cpersonality\u201d does, and that they didn\u2019t do it to mock Asians.\u00a0 Except the YouTube loser probably did it because he was ignorantly mocking the Buddhist or Shinto cultures that most frequently clasps their hands in prayer (but without the sorority squat) like the style in which they\u2019re mocking.<\/span><\/p>\n

The bottom line is that the girl wearing a qipao isn\u2019t racist.\u00a0 But their choice of pose for a prom photo definitely is.\u00a0 Either way, it means nothing to me<\/a>, but as an actual Asian, I felt like chiming in my authoritative stance on what was racist versus what wasn\u2019t in this particular instance.<\/span><\/p>\n

\/micdrop<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s amazing the lengths that people go out of their way these days for in order to pretend like they\u2019re offended so that they can have a reason to bitch about something on social media with hopes that they\u2019ll go viral and get 15 seconds of internet fame. \u00a0This week\u2019s staged offense is a story … Continue reading What\u2019s not racist versus what is<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[45,89,156,146],"class_list":["post-45848","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-brog","tag-fail","tag-racism","tag-social-media","tag-triggered"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45848","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=45848"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45848\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":45850,"href":"http:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45848\/revisions\/45850"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=45848"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=45848"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=45848"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}