It’s amazing the lengths that people go out of their way these days for in order to pretend like they’re offended so that they can have a reason to bitch about something on social media with hopes that they’ll go viral and get 15 seconds of internet fame. This week’s staged offense is a story about a girl in Utah who went to her high school prom wearing a Chinese qipao dress; it doesn’t sound like a big deal at all, but the thing is that the girl wasn’t Chinese or any sort of Asian descent, and suddenly she’s a racist, she’s culturally appropriating, and she’s offending many, many people.
Speaking as an Asian person, I’ll say this: a not-Chinese person wearing a qipao is NOT racist. Period, full stop.
It also isn’t cultural appropriation, which honestly shouldn’t 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. If place of origin is what decides what culture clothing belongs to, then just about every American is culturally appropriating someone else’s clothing.
And historically, there have been litanies of women who have worn qipaos or other traditional Chinese garments who weren’t Chinese. 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. There is zero difference between people like these and a teenage girl wearing a qipao for her prom. She’s 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’s prom by someone who claims to really love it.
The outrage directed to this girl solely wearing the dress while not being Chinese is 100% unwarranted. 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.
However, the defense of the teen stops here, because teenagers are mostly completely incapable of not eventually sticking their feet into their own mouths. Because although not-Chinese girl wearing qipao isn’t racist, the group pose (above) with her shockingly-even-for-Utah all-white prom party, well, now, yeah that’s kind of racist. All the bros appear to be doing the Barstool Sports 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. Or pretending to be Chun-Li.
The best part is that the teen’s mom tries to come to the defense of her daughter and all her lily-white passively ignorant racist friends, and tries to explain that the pose is something that some YouTube “personality” does, and that they didn’t do it to mock Asians. 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’re mocking.
The bottom line is that the girl wearing a qipao isn’t racist. But their choice of pose for a prom photo definitely is. Either way, it means nothing to me, but as an actual Asian, I felt like chiming in my authoritative stance on what was racist versus what wasn’t in this particular instance.
/micdrop
