Bath & Body Works Apologizes for ‘KKK’ Candle Controversy
Bath & Body Works has issued an apology after their "Snowed In" holiday candle scent was met with backlash due to its eyebrow-raising design. The candle's label went viral for all the wrong reasons when many dubbed it "offensive" due to its design looking more like a group of Ku Klux Klan hoods than a snowflake.
Boba tea startup rejected by 'Shark Tank' pitches Simu Liu after cultural appropriation debate
Olivia Chen and Pauline Ang, friends and business partners on boba milk tea brand Twrl, have tried three times to get on “Shark Tank,” the ABC reality show where up-and-coming entrepreneurs try to woo big-name backers. Now, in a plot twist they couldn’t have imagined, the San Francisco...
The ‘cult of the keffiyeh’ turns pro-Hamas college kids into vicarious victims
Whatever happened to the sin of cultural appropriation? This ideology of rebuke held sway on university campuses for years. The idea was that no member of the majority group should ever appropriate the cultural habits of a minority group. It’s offensive, apparently. It’s racial theft. It’s parody disguised as authenticity. And yet today, visit any campus in the West and everywhere you look you’ll see white youths dressed as Arabs. Keffiyeh chic is all the rage. You’re no one unless you have one of these black-and-white scarves that are widely worn in the Palestinian territories. Student radicals, celebrities, Guardian-reading dads on...
Amid an Uptick in Censorship, a National Coalition Is Helping Artists Fight Back
THE ARTIST XANDRA IBARRA was caught off guard by a text she received in February 2020. It was a message from a curator she was working with on a group exhibition opening that week at the City of San Antonio’s Centro de Artes gallery. They were informing her that her video in the show had been removed.Order to Remove Cigarette from Singapore Street Art Mural Prompts Censorship Concerns The 4-minute piece, Spictacle II: La Tortillera (2014), shows Ibarra performing as La Chica Boom, her burlesque stage persona. A minstrelsy of Chicanx gender and racial stereotypes, the piece culminates with the artist...