BBC article on 'celebrities wearing offensive clothes' - Woman criticised for male violence

[ArabellaScott]

www.bbc.co.uk/news/newsbeat-64503224

A Swedish singer wore a band T shirt.

Turns out one of the band members:

'He's known for holding neo-Nazi views, and has been called "anti-Semitic and xenophobic".

Vikernes also got a prison sentence for murdering a fellow metal musician and setting fire to churches in Norway.

Not the best look.'

What, murdering people?! Or wearing a Tshirt?

'The catwalk of shame' article goes on to criticise five more women for their fashion choices.

This seems utterly blatant, vapid, woman-blaming, anti-woman pish to me, am I alone? Article written by a man who is apparently a 'senior journalist'.

Zara Larsson: Why do celebrities wear offensive outfits?

Presumably because they have no idea that they might be offensive?

Yes, that was the gist of it.

Women who have worn a piece of clothing without adequately researching it first are pilloried and criticised. Meanwhile, the murderer and arsonist gets a breezy passing mention.

I find that really jarring. Maybe it's just shit writing.

Totally agree. What a dreadful article. Only women are to blame here apparently!

Oh fuck. It is going to take forever to choose a t-shirt now. It has to researched for fabric sources, ethical manufacturing, ethical distribution and store selling, and now we have to research all alternative meanings of any words and symbols.

Now we have to research the background to any music we like the sound of before we say we like it, and any band member and who they have ever had a conversation with, a photo taken with, let alone their political beliefs! What if their mum isn’t on social media to confirm that they treated their mum right?

Well the knot that t-shirt makes is about as tight a purity spiral as you can get.

A lot of us who were teenagers in the late 70s and 80s wore deliberately offensive stuff. It was a very punk/new wave thing to do. Some of it I cringe about now, but it was mainly just misguided self-expression (see also song lyrics we sang along to).

I think cosplaying as someone from another culture can be offensive, but wearing accessories, clothing items or styles because you like them and respect the culture isn't the same thing. There as so many borrowings from other countries and cultures in fashion already. Where would you stop?

So the BBC, in its newsbeat section - which is specifically aimed at children - is channelling DM ‘sidebar of shame’-style digital hounding of women based on their appearance, but referencing TikTok to show how down with the youth it is / justify its misogyny.

Such high quality journalism at the BBC, truly an national institution to be proud of.

Could they find no male celebrities in offensive clothes to balance the article a bit?

Not sure if it's the same for everyone, but one is the links at the bottom was to an article about dressing 'modestly'. 🙄

(Didn't read it but guess whether it featured men or women in the pictures...)

You’re spot on. That’s the key point here.

They’ve identified various occasions when individuals in the music / fashion / influencer business have been subjected to a self righteous social media backlash (whether justifiably or unjustifiably) and either
a) ignored all the times a man has been embroiled in such a backlash or
b) failed to spot that it doesn’t happen to men and not asked themselves why.

My post lacked nuance, as I’d skimmed through the article too quickly.

I think you'd have to ask each celebrity the reason for wearing each 'offensive' item. They haven't got a hive mind and perhaps they mean to raise awareness rather than offend anyone. Perhaps they just think it's fashionable or will get them publicity. Who knows.

Burzum are an ever discussed topic in metal culture (what do you do when a pioneer of the subgenre does a terrible thing? You can’t erase the music from history and extract it from the output of all the subsequent bands influenced by it)

If you aren’t part of that scene and just liked the edgy, spikey lettered look associated with Black & Death Metal why WOULD you know the dodgy backstory of the singer? It’s not exactly mainstream.

The convicted murderer has been released having completed his prison sentence so it seems a bit unfair to shame a woman for a T shirt when even the murderer himself has been declared rehabilitated enough for release by the state:

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burzum

The moral of this story is surely just ‘don’t wear styles associated with subcultures that you aren’t part of & don’t know anything about because you might end up looking a bit silly’?

Varg Vikernes of Burzum did 15 years in prison and was released over a decade ago, fact fans!

I have one of these T shirts.

All the style of niche Metal, none of the far right association, just the marvellousness of Dolly P!

Larsson’s dress only contains a fragment of Burzum artwork (top corner, half the U and a whole M).
How the fuck would she know? The whole T shirt is currently on sale on Amazon and no one seems to be kicking up a fuss about that.

www.revolvermag.com/culture/swedish-pop-star-zara-larsson-slammed-wearing-burzum-dress

Maybe no male celebrities have done anything offensive recently

The BBC promoting regressive attitudes to women? Surely not 🙄

But only if you're a woman, men don't need to worry about these things 🙄

Cultural appropriation is a load of nonsense. Katy Perry wearing a kimono would have been appreciated by most Japanese people as a compliment and showing interest in Japanese culture. The 'bindi' worn by Selena Gomez is worn by Hindu women who are married, it shows that they are so and is no more cultural appropriation than wearing a wedding ring would be (assuming you are married) and has similar cultural and religious connotations (widows should not wear a bindi btw). Anyone can wear a nikab,which is based on the garb worn by Christian nuns in the early middle ages. I have a Native American headdress which I wear occasionally. I know what it is and I borrow it. Those who complain never seem to be the people who the item originated with, who mainly are the opposite of offended. For example, if attending a Hindu ceremony or temple etc or entering a mosque, wearing appropriate clothing in the form of a sari or salwar kameze is much appreciated. The article is not only talking racist nonsense it is deeply misogynistic.

@NicolaSturgeonsSOGIbottom Love the trivia.
I think it started with young celebs wearing Iron Maiden t-shirts (gateway band 😆) and it escalated from there.

Two things to say:

1. Celebrities need to ignore or double-down. Fed up of hand-wringing apologies over nothing.
2. Separate the art from the author, otherwise we have to bin most literature and pretty much all music and paintings.

Plus it’s cool to be edgy in youth. 😎

Maybe no male celebrities have done anything offensive recently

Or indeed since 2013 when Katy Perry committed the crime of kimono-wearing. That must be like ancient history education to Newsbeat readers.

ArabellaScott · Today 09:15

Women who have worn a piece of clothing without adequately researching it first are pilloried and criticised.

When I was about 20, I used to help out at a gym and one of the blokes came in with a bag of T-Shirts and gave them away. They had the Logo "Violent Storm," complete with thunderclouds and lightning bolts, with small pictures of a couple of men with guitars. Great, I thought and took one.

Not long afterwards, two young women and a young bloke approached me and called me a Nazi. WTF are you on about, I asked? It turned out that Violent Storm are / were a Nazi skinhead band...

I turned it inside out and binned it, when I got home.

Crikey, Sinnerboy! What an odd way to try and recruit people.

I am heartened by the thought of a Nazi with a garden shed so stuffed full of T shirts that no one wanted to buy.

’Fuck! Not much of a market for far right regalia after all… may as well give the bloody things away’

ArabellaScott · Today 16:12

Crikey, Sinnerboy! What an odd way to try and recruit people.

I'd never thought of it like that!

Axl Rose (Guns n Roses) has frequently and deliberately worn a T shirt with Charles Manson on it to perform. Easily found out if you were, say, researching an article.

Also easy to find out that a male rapper called Slowthai wore a vintage Vivienne Westwood T shirt with a pink swastika which causes controversy as people didn't recognise it as a protest image and just thought he was wearing a swastika.

Don't journalists research around their thoughts before they write articles and get them published by the BBC?

Good god! It's almost like the writer has deliberately and calculatedly gone looking for young women to castigate and ostentatiously ignored men's crimes and fashion choices!