Author of Michelle: Her First Year As First LadyPosted on 09/30/2017 8:35:38 AM PDT by NOBO2012
You might have thought after the politicization of football and children’s library books there would be nothing left to politicize but you would be wrong. Robin Givhans has managed to make the case that even clothing is political – not to mention racist.
Before we get into the specifics, allow me to establish Ms. Givhan’s credentials. A Detroit native, she graduated from Princeton, holds a master’s degree in journalism from the University of Michigan and has been a fashion writer – for the Detroit Free Press, San Francisco Chronicle, Vogue, The Daily Beast, and currently the Washington Post - for nearly 30 years.
In 2006 she received a Pulitzer Prize for Criticism, the first ever awarded to a fashion writer: “the Pulitzer Committee explained its rationale by noting Givhan's "witty, closely observed essays that transform fashion criticism into cultural criticism.”
Despite once having the audacity to criticize Michelle Obama for wearing shorts to the Grand Canyon ("Avoiding the appearance of queenly behavior is politically wise. But it does American culture no favors if a first lady tries so hard to be average that she winds up looking common," ) she otherwise checked every politically correct box out there.
Still, her column from last month seems to go beyond the norms of standard cultural political correctness: Neo-Nazis are using fashion in an attempt to normalize, and the fashion industry needs to speak up. It’s about the White Supremacists who marched in Charlottesville and what they wore. Her main objection is that the Neo-Nazis didn’t don the cloaks and hoods of the Klu Klux Klan and instead wore “ordinary” clothes. And she’s also upset that the fashion world has not vociferously condemned this cultural appropriation. Excerpts from her emotional column:
Fashion has been weaponized. And the fashion industry has been all but silent…
In the multitude of images from Charlottesville, the race-baiting protesters are decked out in white polo shirts and khakis. Others are wearing neat jeans, button-down shirts, cargo shorts. They are wearing jeans and striped pullovers that look like they could have come from the sale rack at a local Gap…
Trigger! Trigger! Trigger!
But the relevance of fashion in the conversation about racial hatred goes well beyond any particular brand. For an observer cognizant of the internal symbols and visual language of white nationalists, there was a lot to read: neo-Nazi, Proud Boy, skinhead, alt-right. But for the uninitiated, the style of dress was unremarkable. This wasn't a crowd filled with white robes and hoods…
Why wouldn’t fashion speak up? Especially now that fashion has become a stealth weapon for white nationalists. Neo-Nazis have bought into fashion’s ability to camouflage, distract, embolden, reassure, flatter and, quite simply, lie…
I’m not sure how Robin feels about the NFL but she clearly thinks the fashion industry needs to speak up against this existential racist, sexist, homophobic threat:
Not every industry needs to make a public statement with every turn of the news cycle…
Still, the fashion industry is anchored by large public companies that carry just as much cultural clout as any athlete or actor. Many fashion brands have built their businesses on the mythic melting pot of the American Dream. Fashion owes an especially large debt to those communities targeted by white supremacists: Designers regularly draw artistic inspiration from communities of color. Some of fashion's earliest and most influential merchants and editors have been Jewish. And the industry has benefited greatly from the creativity and ingenuity of those who identify as LBGT.
Thanks LGBTQ!
White nationalists are moving through communities cloaked in the most mundane, banal kind of fashion. Clothes that do not inspire a double-take. Clothes that are acceptable and appropriate. Clothes that make them look like they belong. And the fashion industry has yet to tell them that they do not.
Hey, I’ve got it! How about if we make the Alt-Right all wear pink pussy hats when they assemble?
Just what America needs, another industry telling us to check our privilege, stop with the cultural appropriation and just shut up.
Posted from: MOTUS A.D.
For the left everything is political without the tiniest exception.
I need 3 sentences that break the thesis of that article down.
How dare those who gathered to peacefully protest the removal of a statue dress like the college educated, middle class, law abiding taxpayers they were, as opposed to the ignorant white trash the left portrayed them to be.
They hire bag ladies now.
And then one day a laundry basket took a walk!
Is that a trans gendered circus clown?
Lynn Yeager
Nut
She wrote for the Voice when I was a Manhattanite
Don’t misinterpret this article. It is actually white people causing the racial divide in this Republic.
Almost..the chief fashion editor at the Vogue magazine.
This is not the magazine you are looking for.
White Leftists are causing the racial divide. And that is just o.k. with me. Its going to blow up one way or another anyway.
Jews and homosexuals are indeed the predominate force in fashion in the USA
and strong in Paris and Milan
The rest of this article is bull
Ah, she’s once again put “racism” on “Politicized”
as Free Republic’s residence steampunk/goth open carried and heavily pierced member I can tell you that eyeliner, black nails and my extraordinarily fitted black jackets (And pigtails when I had the hair) didn’t get me quite excepted into TEA party rallies. Now I’m basically the same dude without the eyeliner, black nails and I have a buzzcut. And when I put my grey-man clothes on I’m now engaged as a right-wing patriot.
The way I looked has had an impact on how people think I stand, politically.
But this troll wants to make the political statement as a racial one, which the classic push of the leftist a-hole.
Being from CT I’ve seen my share of leftists who look like veteran operators and flag-waving patriots. They aren’t. They are psychotic commies through and through.
Oh, and 5.11 makes a DANDY polo !
Sorry
Reality has caused the racial divide
The left uses is better than the right who tries to deny it
That’s how I’ve seen it all my life which is 60 next month
The left learned early with the freedom riders that demonizing whites worked
LBJ not much of a Progressive by today’s notions understood how to milk it
life imitates the movies.
These people look like a casting call for the hunger games.
OK, I get it. White people shouldn’t be allowed to wear White people clothes. One really wonders what we SHOULD be allowed to wear. Sackcloth and ashes?
oh that one. I seen that one before. Nasty piece of work.
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