Nadra Nittle at Vox wrote earlier this month—These costumes objectify Native American women. Retailers won’t stop selling them:
The online retailer Yandy quickly pulled a Halloween costume from its website on September 20 after critics said it made light of rape. Clearly inspired by the dystopian novel and TV series The Handmaid’s Tale, Yandy’s “Brave Red Maiden” costume resembles the outfits women forced into concubinage wear in writer Margaret Atwood’s fictional hellscape. There’s just one notable difference: Yandy reinterpreted the floor-length robe that handmaids wear as a body-hugging minidress, eroticizing a garment many fans of the book and TV show associate with the sexual abuse of women.
“It has become obvious that our ‘Yandy Brave Red Maiden Costume’ is being seen as a symbol of women’s oppression, rather than an expression of women’s empowerment,” the company said in a statement. “This is unfortunate, as it was not our intention on any level.”
Likely to avoid a copyright infringement suit, Yandy’s controversial red number does not directly reference The Handmaid’s Tale, but it looks enough like the outfits women wear on the series to leave no doubt about its inspiration. While the retailer quickly pulled the offensive knockoff, Yandy’s critics argue that the company has routinely ignored the plight of a real-life group of women often subject to abuse: Native Americans.
They say Yandy, and outfitters like Party City and Spirit Halloween, sell costumes that sexually objectify indigenous women. In fact, Yandy has an entire collection of ensembles described as “sexy Indian” or “sexy Pocahontas” looks. Also known as “Pocahottie” costumes, these getups are a stereotypical and provocative take on Native dress. With fringe and feathers, the frocks are hiked up to the thighs, low-cut, or belly-baring. [...]
Amanda Blackhorse at High Country News writes—Stop selling costumes that sexualize Indigenous women:
Three weeks ago, I was threatened with arrest for presenting a petition with more than 14,000 signatures on it to a Halloween-costume maker. Yandy, a Phoenix, Arizona-based lingerie distributor, sells around 40 different styles of Native American-themed costumes. Most of them are for women, and most are sexualized.
It’s past time to speak up about America’s unwillingness to address the racism and discrimination directed at Indigenous people, particularly women.
And yet the company continues to sell costumes that disparage Native women and reduce us to sexual objects, despite protests from Indigenous communities nationwide. A company spokesperson tried to justify this, telling the Phoenix New Times that “the costumes are influenced by powerful fashion elements derived from the culture and are intended to pay homage to the Native American community, not to mock or offend.”
Last year, Yandy CEO Jeff Watton told Cosmopolitan magazine that he had no intention of pulling the line of Native-themed costumes, unless backlash resulted in “significant demonstrations” or reached a point of contentiousness “along the lines of the Black Lives Matter movement,” Watton said. “Then it’s become too hot of an issue.” It’s easy to see why the company wants to continue selling racist costumes: Sales of the line totaled $150,000 in 2016 alone. [...]
The petition now has 23,000 names on it.
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QUOTATION
“It is my fervent goal and hope…that we will some day no longer have to rely on nuclear weapons to deter aggression and assure world peace. To that end the United States is now engaged in a serious and sustained effort to negotiate major reductions in levels of offensive nuclear weapons with the ultimate goal of eliminating these weapons from the face of the earth.”
~~Ronald Reagan, October 20, 1986
TWEET OF THE DAY
BLAST FROM THE PAST
On this date at Daily Kos in 2008—Lynch Mob:
Ashley Todd, the young Texan McCain volunteer who claimed she was mugged, sexually assaulted and had a "B" carved into her face by a "dark-skinned" black man near an ATM in Pittsburgh, has confessed that she made up her story. Just as several of us said would happen. It’s hard to know what the cops and the district attorney will do. Making a false report to the police is usually a felony. Whatever happens in the legal system, let’s hope Todd gets some psychological counseling, court ordered if necessary. She's young. She can get better.
There is no hope, however, for jackals like Drudge, numerous other rightwing bloggers, and executive vice president for Foxaganda, Joe Moody.
Because what we have here is a story that not so many years ago got black men lynched. Dragged from their houses to quiet locations by masked or unmasked men, stripped, castrated, hanged, burned and gruesomely photographed. Although many people—even the usually execrable Michele Malkin—were skeptical of Todd’s report the minute they heard it and saw the alleged "carving" of "B" on her face, the Mandingo button had been pushed. The completely unsubtle message? A big black man, black as coal, wearing black clothes and black shoes, a blackety-black man, had done what black men have done to white women in America since 1619 given half a chance.
On today’s Kagro in the Morning show: Lol yolo nothing matters! This has turned into some kind of a day. Greg Dworkin & Armando round up Trump’s absurd lies on every subject imaginable, plus some imaginary ones, and things just got worse from there. Either the worst show ever, or genius.
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