Halloween has the tendency to be a holiday that drums up a lot of controversy whenever it comes around. Granted, some years are worse than others, but no Halloween can rear its monster-promoting, diabetes-inducing face without some degree of objection from the more strictly religious among us. After all, Halloween is that wonderful time of year when images of the occult, and other “dork-syded“ things, flow through suburban streets with the frequency of opioid painkillers.
But that’s not all that comes with Halloween. There’s also a whole cultural appropriation aspect to it, and often, it is hyper-sexualized. The sexualized cultural appropriation commonly seen around Halloween is the subject of a recent controversy at Amazon, and this specific incident involves burkas, criticism of said burkas, and a decision by the company to remove the listing for said burkas. But it also contains another factor all too common to American culture. It involves, to put it delicately, hypocrisy of the highest order.
Because a bunch of people were upset by the “sexy burka,” Amazon took it down, a bold move to appease social justice warriors in their never-ending pursuit of a Halloween season devoid of cultural appropriation.
It cannot be stressed enough that people were pissed. After all, they left such comments as:
“Is this some sort of mockery to the religion?”
“It’s not a joke.”
“You’re all disgusting racists. My culture is not your costume.”
“A person’s culture is NOT a fancy dress costume.”
The Internet shopping denizens got their way: the costume was taken down and Amazon issued a statement urging sellers using the website to “follow selling guidelines” or else face punitive action “including potential removal of their account.” Then the social justice warriors carried on about their days. Crisis averted. Well, except there are so many other things on Amazon that should be the subject of their outrage, but conveniently aren’t, such as:
“N.I.L.F…”
… And “Let’s Take Some X And Fuck To Dubstep On An Altar While Jesus Watches.”
Listen, that’s just a few examples from the Catholic-inspired costumes populated on Amazon at the time of this writing. That doesn’t take into consideration:
… And “I Put A Spell on You.”
So, the “sexy burka” was undone due to outcry over cultural appropriation, but appropriated Catholic culture, American Indian culture, Egyptian culture, Pagan culture, as well as a myriad of others, continue to exist with little to no objection, at the very least a level of objection that does not meet what is needed to force the world’s largest online retailer to undo an advertised sale and issue a statement on the matter. Why?
Perhaps it’s because when it comes to these images, people generally don’t care, and if the reaction to these other cultures and religions is going to be this benign, then Islamic culture should not be an exception. If one is going to get all twisted up over cultural appropriation, then it should be across the board and not focused on just one culture being appropriated, even if the culture being appropriated is your own. One simply does not get to speak out against cultural appropriation, focus on a single incident of it, then check out while ignoring thousands of other incidents taking place at the exact same time.
This is the same as someone having an objection to the Washington Redskins name and image — because it’s a goddamn racial slur — and not be offended by Chief Wahoo.
But what is perhaps the most egregious aspect of this story isn’t just that someone could buy the Prime-eligible Women’s Dreams Nun Panty and Headwear Set without any notable objection from anyone, but that this damn costume is still up at the time of this writing:
Three-out-of-five stars, a model in Arabface, and this product review (among dozens of others that condemn it):
“Loved it and tired of the pc folks who have no life, friends, real life experience, can’t get a joke, pussies, will die if all hell broke loose, idiots.”
I wonder if this dude bought that special lady in his life the Slutty Donald Trump costume. After all, it’s time make Halloween great again, right?
Featured image via Pixabay.
h/t CainTV
