Another day, another fierce Internet debate about almost-billionaire Kylie Jenner. Moving on from conversations about whether or not she should be described as “self-made” and her lip filler, people have turned their focus on a new thing: her daughter’s pierced ears.
Yesterday, Jenner uploaded a video to Snapchat of herself giving kisses to her daughter, Stormi Webster, and eagle-eyed viewers soon noticed that the 5-month-old has pierced ears. As with all things Kardashian-Jenner, people were not afraid to share their opinions about this online. But babies with pierced ears has been a hot topic for years, one that bubbles up every time a celebrity is involved. See also: Gisele Bundchen, Angelina Jolie, Kim Kardashian-West, and, yes, even Beyoncé—who took some heat for Blue Ivy having pierced ears at age two.
In the case of Stormi’s ears, Twitter users are particularly fired up for a debate. Some argue that parents should wait until the child can decide for herself whether or not she wants her ears pierced, while others worried about inflicting pain on a baby.
Others defended Kylie Jenner’s decision by pointing out that in many cultures it’s a common tradition to pierce a baby’s ears. “For Latina moms, piercing their baby girls’ ears has nothing to do with vanity,” Roxana Soto, author of Bilingual Baby, told Today.com all the way back in 2013—proving the debate is not just a Kylie thing. “It’s simply a cultural tradition. So much so that I freaked out when I learned my first child was a girl because I had no idea where I would take her to get her ears pierced.”
However, another issue some have taken with ear piercing at a young age is that it’s a very gendered decision to make for another person before they’re able to consent themselves. The tweets below were written before Stormi’s piercing, but are a good example of the argument against:
Yesterday, the already-frenzied news cycle amped up to a new level with Justice Anthony Kennedy’s announcement that he will be retiring from the Supreme Court. That means that President Donald Trump will now have the chance to nominate a second judge, after already placing Justice Neil Gorsuch on the highest court in the land not long after his inauguration.
Justice Kennedy is one of the conservative members of the court, but he has been a swing vote (siding with the liberals) on a number of key issues like abortion rights and gay marriage. His Trump-nominated replacement is expected to make the court much more conservative—and many are concerned about what that means for the future of Roe v. Wade and other cases.
Which is why some of Hollywood’s most famous, and outspoken, celebrities are taking to social media to make their opinions known and calling on their followers to take action.
Olivia Wilde, never one to shy away from speaking her mind, was very blunt in tweeting, “Let’s be clear: it is not a question of abortions or no abortions. It is only a question of whether women will die having them.”
Debra Messing posted an Instagram video—wearing a “Badass Feminist” shirt—pledging that she is ready to dig in and fight. “If Trump gets one of his nominees in we are looking at Roe v Wade being overturned,” she wrote. “Gay marriage overturned. It would be terrible for Union members, and everyone who needs affordable health care. Civil Rights as we know them will be chipped away. PLEASE commit to fighting this.”
Some, like comedian Billy Eichner, were just sad—while Cher was her usual fired up (and all caps) self.
Queer Eye‘s Jonathan Van Ness tweeted, “Omg can we do that cute unconstitutional thing again where we stall on nominees until the next election?” (He’s referring to the time Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell refused to hold hearings on then-President Barack Obama’s Supreme Court nominee, Merrick Garland, in 2016 because it was an election year.)
Wherever you stand on the issue, be prepared to see your social media feeds jammed with talk of SCOTUS and judicial nominees for the foreseeable future.
Former President Bill Clinton is raising eyebrows after a Monday appearance on the Today show in which, during a segment to promote his new book, The President Is Missing (cowritten with James Patterson), he maintained that his decision to fight impeachment after the Monica Lewinsky scandal was the right thing to do.
But there was one quote in particular that says a lot about how he views the #MeToo movement, which was referenced in a segment of the conversation when NBC News’ Craig Melvin asked whether Clinton would have done anything differently had that scandal happened during the #MeToo era. In one swoop Clinton managed to praise the movement while simultaneously casting doubt with his own concerns.
“I like the Me Too movement, it’s way overdue,” he told Melvin. “I think the…it doesn’t mean I agree with everything. I still have some questions about some of the decisions that have been made.”
In the 20 years since the Ken Starr investigation that turned her into a household name, Lewinsky appears to have done a lot of thinking and analysis about her role in the scandal, as evidenced by her February essay for Vanity Fair. In the wake of the #MeToo movement that is changing cultural views about sexual harassment, Lewinsky opened up about being able to look at the situation differently, while still accepting responsibility for her own decisions. “Now, at 44, I’m beginning (just beginning) to consider the implications of the power differentials that were so vast between a president and a White House intern,” she wrote. “I’m beginning to entertain the notion that in such a circumstance the idea of consent might well be rendered moot. (Although power imbalances—and the ability to abuse them—do exist even when the sex has been consensual.)”
“He was my boss. He was the most powerful man on the planet. He was 27 years my senior, with enough life experience to know better,” she said. “He was, at the time, at the pinnacle of his career, while I was in my first job out of college.”
Clinton, however, is still making it about him.
“One of the things that this Me Too era has done is that it’s forced a lot of women to speak out. One of those women is Monica Lewinsky,” interviewer Craig Melvin says. “She wrote in an op-ed that the Me Too movement changed her view of sexual harassment….Looking back on what happened and through the lens of Me Too now, do you think differently or feel more responsibility?”
“I felt terrible then. And I came to grips with it,” Clinton said. When asked if he’s ever apologized, Clinton said that he hasn’t talked to Lewinsky personally, but has apologized “to everyone in the world.”
“Nobody believes that I got out of that for free. I left the White House $16 million in debt,” he says. “But you typically have ignored gaping facts in describing this. And I bet you don’t even know that. This was litigated 20 years ago, and two thirds of the American people sided with me.”
The conversation was an uncomfortable watch, albeit an important one. Two decades have passed, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t look back and reflect on what happened in hopes of learning from the situation. Unfortunately, that does not seem to be Clinton’s point of view.
Yes, it’s great that he has supported women in many ways during his political career, but that doesn’t absolve him from bad behavior, especially as it relates to Lewinsky. Doing good work and behaving inappropriately are two things that can be true at the same time. But the defensive and smug tone of his responses indicates to me that Clinton is unchanged in looking at the role he played in the situation.
And that’s incredibly disheartening.
As women, we can continue to tell our stories, to speak our truth, to call out bad behavior that has been tolerated for far too long. But when men, especially leaders, refuse to acknowledge their own roles in the culture of harassment, progress will come much more slowly.
During the past few weeks, a particular news story has sent shockwaves through my personal social network: Keziah Daum, an American teenager, wore a traditional Chinese dress—known as either cheongsam or qipao, depending on whether you speak Cantonese or Mandarin—to her high school prom in Utah. The problem? Daum is not of Chinese descent.
Having moved to London from Hong Kong, I’ve become part of a close-knit community of young Asian women living in the UK. Since the dress debacle, the WhatsApp group we use to stay in touch has been flooded with a steady stream of articles covering the controversy, as well as screenshots of Daum’s response and people’s outraged reactions. These updates were often shared along with a slew of angry emojis and all caps responses, to the tune of, “how dare she?”
“I suppose I was frustrated by it mainly because it looks out of context,”says Melissa Legarda, 25, a Filipino-British journalist who initially shared the story with the group. “I always have such a skepticism when I see a [non-POC] wearing a dress of another country or tradition that’s not [their own] because most of the time, they don’t appreciate the traditions involved in that culture.” Legarda’s sentiment mirrors the reaction shared by many Asians in the West, who have taken to Twitter to voice their dissent. One particular tweet, accusing Daum of cultural appropriation, has been retweeted over 41,000 times at publish time.
On Facebook, where I still keep in touch with my friends from Hong Kong, my feed tells a completely different story. Karen Chiang, one of my Hong Kong-based friends, shared a BuzzFeed article covering the controversy, writing, “This girl rocked it. Full stop.” Other commenters agreed,echoing the effusive feedback thousands of Chinese netizens have shared on Weibo, China’s answer to Twitter. The message was clear: To the Chinese, Daum totally rocked the dress—no offense taken.
“I didn’t think there was a more appropriate or respectful way for a foreigner to pay homage to qipaos and the Chinese culture, especially compared to occasions where Chinese culture is reduced to a fans, dragons, and chopstick-in-a-top-bun kind of moment,” Chiang writes in an email. The 25-year-old wellness blogger and freelance writer grew up in Hong Kong, and has seen many white expats in Hong Kong partake in the aforementioned type of dress—but didn’t see any hints of malice or racism.
“I probably raised an eyebrow [at these people], because they look quite silly most of the time. But, as long as people are trying their best to respect and appreciate a culture, I’m cool with it. It’s still better than if they didn’t bother to open their minds at all.”
PHOTO: Anadolu Agency
A group of women in Beijing, China wearing the traditional qipao.
Detractors of Daum argued that the group shot of her and her friends made the dress choice even more problematic: The teenagers were photographed squatting while making prayer hands and peace signs, which many perceived as a gesture to mock Asian stereotypes. In a statement to Teen Vogue, Daum has clarified that the pose was not meant to be derogatory, but rather, a reference to a popular YouTuber.
“It’s obviously a bad idea to adopt the pose, since Daum was already appropriating the qipao, and the pose is very similar to the ‘Asian squat’—a pose] associated with Asian people,” says Isabelle Landicho, a 26-year-old Filipino-British stylist and one of my close friends firmly in the disapproving camp. “Obviously, people are going to associate the two factors and be offended! If you’re not an Asian person or not participating in an Asian event or practice, I think it’s a slur.”
I was born and raised in China, but have spent most of my young adulthood in the West. I have complicated feelings about this dichotomy of opinion.
PHOTO: TPG
Women participating in a Cheongsam Fashion Show in Chongqing, China, in September 2017.
My international experience has opened my eyes to the type of racial prejudice and microaggressions my fellow Chinese and Asian immigrants face daily (not to mention the atrocities of Japanese internment camps and the Chinese Exclusion Act), so I can’t fault my peers in the West for feeling aggrieved by Daum’s decision. It’s easy to perceive her actions as some form of mockery rather than celebration.
Landicho recalled a harrowing incident where, while she was working on set at a photo shoot in London, someone held up a prop that looked similar to the Asian conical hat, put it on, and claimed that now they resembled her.
Legarda admitted that her experience growing up Asian in the UK colored her reaction to the prom dress. “If someone had worn a traditional African dress and did a pose, there would be uproar,” she says. “But I feel like Asians and Asian culture are constantly sidelined just because of a race hierarchy within the societal structure.”
PHOTO: Rob Kim
Costumes on display in the Costume Institute’s 2015 ‘China: Through The Looking Glass’ exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.
However, in a community that feels as homogenous as China—where 92% of the population is Han Chinese—the intricacies of cultural appropriation might not translate. Ian Tam, a 25-year-old paralegal in Hong Kong, puts it this way: “Chinese culture doesn’t have ‘PC’ culture like American culture does. If we see a person in traditional costume, we just comment on how well it fits them.”
In fact, the Chinese love dressing up in traditional garments from other cultures: Head to any major city in Japan, and you’ll spot a slew of “kimono experience” shops, where you can rent a full kimono for a day. Visitors from China, which accounts for over a quarter of Japan’s tourism, can’t get enough. The potential for a social media photo ops was just too good to pass up.
I was one of those Chinese tourists: On a trip to Japan in 2014, I spent two hours getting into traditional dress, got my hair and makeup done, and visited different shrines of Kyoto all day. Perhaps my East Asian descent gave me more of a “cultural license” to do so. I loved receiving looks of admiration from tourists and onlookers, some of whom asked to take photographs with me. I looked—and felt—like a princess. And if my money benefitted local businesses, then why the hell not support?
On paper, my intentions didn’t seem all that different from Daum’s. In a follow-up tweet, she claimed her decision to wear a qipao to prom stemmed from her appreciation of Chinese culture. But, the more I thought about it, there was one glaring aspect that set us apart: the cultural context.
Before I ever put a kimono on my back, I made sure to be clued in on the cultural dos and don’ts of wearing a one—along with the correct praying etiquette at shrines and temples. Even though I did all this to check something off my bucket list, I was intentional about educating myself. Meanwhile, I wasn’t as convinced by Daum’s claims on Twitter: Had she demonstrated any previous interest in learning Mandarin or in gaining a deeper knowledge on the heritage of qipao, I would have gladly been more understanding—instead, she referred to the qipao as “a gorgeous dress I found for my last prom” in a tweet, stripping it of its cultural identity until it was time to justify her choice. She also retweeted a meme that essentially positioned herself as a “damned if you do, damned if you don’t” white victim. Then there was that group pose. Pure bad optics.
I’d imagine the reasoning behind my skeptical stance would be lost on most of my compatriots. “China is still very influenced by western trends: [The Chinese] see it as flattery for the trend leaders to adopt their culture,” writes Chiang.
PHOTO: VCG
A group of women, both Chinese and foreign, celebrating Hangzhou Global Cheongsam Day in Hangzhou, China in May 2017.
Due to the country’s status as an “uncool” developing country, many in China will immediately reward Westerners for displaying even a modicum of interest in our culture. Just look at Jessie J, the only Western participant to ever compete on Singer, the Chinese version of The X Factor—previously unknown in China, she won by a landslide, gaining half a million followers on Chinese social media along the way. And, I can’t even begin to count the number of times white men have approached me online and in real life, uttering “ni hao”—“hello” in Mandarin, despite my native tongue being Cantonese—and expecting me to throw myself on them for knowing the simplest greeting in the Chinese language.
I’m not sure if there’s anyone out there who, like me, is also sorting out conflicting feelings on the conversation surrounding Daum’s prom dress. But, just in case there’s someone on the same boat, I felt very understood by this tweet by Jerry Wang, a Chinese-American Twitter user in Durham, NC:
Until this becomes the norm, I will probably meet any non-Chinese girl in a qipao with a certain level of apprehension—unless she’s armed with enthusiastic questions about my culture.
Venus Wong is a lifestyle journalist based in London, specializing in travel writing and Asian cultural commentary. Follow her on Instagram: @venuswongisun.
A decade after singing about being an independent woman who refuses to let men dictate her life in songs like “Goodies” and “That’s Right,” Ciara is under fire for reposting a video on Twitter in which a pastor seemingly reduces women to nothing but wives and girlfriends — as if a woman’s worth can only be derived from the men in her life. In the video, which Ciara posted on Twitter on Saturday night, Pastor John Gray, who has his own show on the Oprah Winfrey Network and has posted openly homophobic statements on Twitter in the past, encourages women who are looking for a relationship to carry themselves like wives. “A wife is not the presence of a ring, but it is the presence of your character. Too many women wanna be married, but you’re walking in the spirit of ‘girlfriend,'” he says, adding, “When you carry yourself like a wife, a husband will find you.” Ciara captioned the video, “#LevelUp.”
The Twittersphere was largely unimpressed with the fact that Ciara — who called off her engagement to rapper Future (the father of her 3-year-old son Future Zahir Wilburn) in 2014 and married NFL star Russell Wilson in 2016 — had endorsed the video. While some took a more lighthearted approach to criticizing the sexist video — “This Ciara business is another reminder that Rihanna is always right,” one person tweeted — others took the post much more seriously. “Ciara is doing what many women do when they overcome trials and get married. She’s using her marital status as a weapon against women who are not married. And it’s clear that she’s tied her value and sense of self worth to her marriage, otherwise she wouldn’t have shared that,” writer CiCi Adams tweeted. “Ciara telling women to ‘Level up’ and live ‘like a wife’ so they can b married is astounding to me. Didn’t you need grace, mercy & compassion when you were being dragged up and down the Internet for the Future situation? How quickly ppl forget when they reach a perch of privilege.”
Others, however, were supportive of Ciara’s decision to repost Gray’s sexist message, although many of those supporters appeared to be men expecting women to cater to them and conform to their ideals. “We love a Queen who knows herself worth and has no problem admitting she had to grow to get there! #LevelUp” one Twitter user wrote.
On Sunday, Ciara attempted to clarify her endorsement of the video with a message about self-love and self-respect. “I was once that girl wanting to be loved a certain way but was making the wrong choices. I found myself at my lowest moment. I was a single mom sitting at home, and I then realized that the perfect love I was looking for was how God loves me, how He wants me to be loved, and who He was calling me to be as a mom and as a woman. Thats when I realized married or not married… I needed to love myself. #LevelUp.”
Following in the footsteps of competitors like Tinder and Bumble, OkCupid has announced it will require its users to use their real names—even if it’s just a first name. The decision that has sparked an uproar with many users, especially with women and the LGBTQ+ community.
In an announcement titled “An Open Letter on Why We’re Removing Usernames, Addressed to the Worst Ones We’ve Ever Seen,” the company explains the rationale behind the decision. “It’s because, like the recent goodbye we said to AIM screen names, it’s time to keep up with the times. We want you, BigDaddyFlash916, to go by who you are, and not be hidden beneath another layer of mystique. Even if that mystique is crucial to you and your dating life, unicorn__jizz.”
We get it: It’s a little less…’00s? Or an effort to look less creepy—considering that, according to OkCupid data cited in the post, upwards of 16,000 users have the word “horny” in their name.
Here’s the problem, though: For a lot of people who don’t happen to be straight, cis men, the ability to use a username can function as a sort of screen, especially at the very beginning of interactions, before a rapport and some sort of trustworthiness is established. In these cases, a username can be critical to feeling safe on the site. And many users let OkCupid know exactly that.
After some backlash, OkCupid said on Friday that they’ll allow users to use the name they’d like to be called on the site, not their full names, as a way to maintain privacy. “We’ve also heard from many members of our community that they want to maintain the privacy they enjoy with usernames—with this change, we won’t be collecting full names; instead, we encourage our users to go by the name they’d like their dates to call them on OkCupid,” the company wrote on the blog. They also tweeted: “We love our members. You do not need to use your government name or even your full first name. Use the name, nickname, or initials you’d like your date to call you on OkCupid.”
So apparently you can use your real name, your first name only, a nickname, or a name you’d like to be called as an OkCupid user…wait a second.
The change, whatever it is, apparently won’t take effect for everyone right away: The company will start rolling it out with a test group “ahead of the New Year” and then everyone else gets hit with it soon after. OkCupid suggests updating profiles ASAP with what you’d want other users to call you, whatever that may be.
