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| Image Credit: facebook.com/leilanidowdingofficial |
Comes now yet another celeb, this time an Anglo-Filipina model from the U.K. who stars on a Miami-based U.S. "reality show," tarted up for Halloween in redface both metaphorical and literal.
Via ICTMN, we learn that she posted her selfie to her Facebook page, captioned:
"I just got massacred by a cowboy. Note Fur is FAKE!!!"
Good for you, dearie. So glad to see that you're so concerned about the possible hurt feelings of animal-rights activists — and presumably about the pelts of the animals themselves.
About the "pelts," the scalps and skins, of our ancestors — you know, actual people, actually massacred — notsomuch, apparently.
[Sigh . . . .]
The Pocahottie (or Pocahotass, take your pick; we use either, and not as a compliment) "costume" is bad enough. You know, Native women are not sex objects and sluts. We're really, fully three-dimensional, fully-actualized human beings. Your equal. We walk every conceivable road, every life path, career, vocation or avocation your imagination can summon. And this is what your brain comes up with?
I'm a little past the sex object age now, but I remember a time when white men thought I'd be flattered by their "squaw" fantasies. You've just played into that whole racist, misogynistic, genocidal slur, but with all the consequences borne by our women, not by yourself. [And if you don't know what that word means, go here and scroll down near the bottom; it's all there.]
But you just had to add the warbonnet, didn't you? A sacred object — and one identified, in actuality, by only a small fraction of our peoples, Hollywood's errors notwithstanding. Yeah, I know, it's a fake "warbonnet." It's still sacrilege to the people to whom that cultural imagery and object belong. It's also not something ever worn by a woman (although you should not make the mistake of thinking that the women of those tribal nations have no power entwined with it, because they most certainly do; power of a sort you clearly have no hope of understanding, much less attaining).
One would think that all of this would be more than enough offense for one Halloween.
One would be horribly, terribly, tragically wrong.
"Redface" is a term I've used probably my whole adult life to describe the practice of non-Indians dressing up in "costume," whether for Halloween, as actors in roles that should be filled by actual Indians, as so-called "fans" of racist mascots, or as out-and-out frauds of the sort that pretend to equally fraudulent "shamanism." It's minstrelsy. And it's racist. If you do it, you're engaging in racist behavior, and your "intent," however you pretend to articulate it, is utterly and completely irrelevant to the racist nature of your conduct.
And so you, Leilani Dowding, have engaged in Redface already, with your skimpy little buckskin fringes and your fake feathers and your sacrilegious headdress. But I guess you just felt compelled to take it to a literal level?
Because what explanation can there possibly be for you to have painted one side of your face, you know, actual red? Worse, for that actual red to represent blood: the blood of scalping, of having one's hair and skin torn from bone like a pelt, for a bounty, and then drizzling the blood "artistically" down your slender throat to run in rivulets over and between your breasts.
I'm rarely speechless about this sort of racism, but I'm having trouble finding the words for this one.
Leilani Dowding, your "apology" in the comments section at ICTMN shows that you still don't get it. So perhaps, from one mixed-blood woman to another (of another different ethnic background), I can break it down for you.
Because this? This is a horror show, but not the fun Halloween kind.
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