Woodstock–promotes illegal drug use and unprotected sexual activity
Camo–promotes war and violence
Any beach or ocean theme–requires a strict dress code to avoid too much skin being exposed
Grease–problematic due to zero diversity, not to mention stereotypical gender roles
Fairy tales–most are extremely sexist. The princess needs to be rescued by the prince, has to find a dress and doll up for the ball, must sit and spin, etc.
Wild West–OK, but will be totally bland without holsters and guns, saloons with voluptuous barmaids, smoking, or “savage natives,” none of which would be acceptable.
Oh, and the major reason the Wild West was wild was due to rampant lawlessness and vigilante justice–frequent ambush robberies and bank robberies (oh dear, that’s felonious behavior). There was also a good bit of tame female kidnapping and sexual slavery (eg. the damsel tied to the railroad ties). Tsk, tsk.
I was tasked one year w organizing the year-end corporate gala. It was agonizing coming up w an inoffensive but fun theme that appealed to diverse audience. GMTspouse saved the day and suggested a ** “Black & White” party**: dress creatively in black & white. Now color is my emergency go-to party theme.
Wow, and no one was offended at that?
“Well who gets to judge degrees of evil? What constitutes bad taste? I know I’m not smart enough. I’d rather err on the side of caution these days. It doesn’t harm me in any way to do so. I’d rather go overboard than risk offending.”
Cool! So please cover yourself and dress more modestly, as some religious men are offended by seeing your uncovered hair, elbows, and ankles. What’s the harm to you?
There was a thread - maybe in the Yale Halloween story - about dressing like a 70s black disco dancer (big Afro, bell bottoms, etc).
It’s interesting that dressing that way would be interpreted as mocking black people but dressing like John Travolta or Olivia Newton-John in Grease would be interpreted as oh, just imitating characters. What does that say about defensiveness?
@Pizzagirl. I think it says that blackface has such a derogorty and hideous history that anything that even touches on it is another league. But my dark skinned Jewish naturally kinky haired neice was accused of being insensitive at a 60 s party. All she did was NOT straighten her hair which she usually does.
^For me it would depend on whether people were dressing like someone of a different race. Bell bottoms, fine. Big sunglasses, fine. Platform boots, fine. An afro wig on a blonde or a blond wig over afro, not fine. Blackface or whiteface, not fine.
Sue gets it. It’s pretty simple
I can’t imagine why everyone doesn’t.
For me, the issue is how quick are the social justice warriors and self-appointed victims to accuse others. Too many people are wielding their sensitivity to real or imagined offenses as a weapon to attack members of a group they resent. Worse, it is almost always the case that they resent them for reasons that date back to distant history when the accused were not even a gleam in their grandfather’s eye. None of today’s students were ever slave traders or slave owners. None of them participated in taking Mexican territory for the United States or in creating characters like Speedy Gonzalez. None of them gave smallpox to Native Americans or exiled Indian tribes to reservations. Yet, they are distrustfully painted with the same brush. I’m sorry, but that’s the definition of prejudice–to blindly assign to individual members the generalized or stereotypical characteristics that you attribute to their group. Maybe it’s time to start turning the tables and calling the accusing SJWs racist.
Look, it’s possible that some kids are being deliberately obnoxious, and maybe the young people in this recent case are among them. But it’s also possible they just thought the little sombreros were cute party decorations. After a while, people need to decide whether they want to be seen as an ordinary American, just like everyone else, or not. Do they want people to see them as an individual like any other individual, or do they first want to be seen as a homosexual, or an African-American or a Mexican, or a member of whatever special group? If the former, then they need to start labeling insults as just the behavior of mean people rather than a new incident in a historical record of wrongs against a group. If they want to be seen as an individual first, they need to be willing to give up their shield of minority privilege, their protected status. That shield is the one which says that if I’m ________, then no one is allowed to offend me and if you do, I get to call you really nasty names to shame you and shut you up. This is a kind of protected status that the supposed privileged majority does not have. Seriously, if you are every bit as smart and strong and competent as the supposed privileged majority, then you don’t need any safe zones.
The Texas cowboy in me is offended that Sasha Baron Cohen is parading around on the daily show in cowboy garb. Where are the PC police?
Now texaspg, the Revolutionary War happened almost 250 years ago. Surely Sasha as a modern Brit is not mocking Americans when he dresses this way. You need to be secure in your identity as a strong and fashionable Texan and if you are, then you wouldn’t be offended by this at all.
Thanks for the party theme ideas though I think some of these were rejected because they worry about how the girls will dress. I am sure Woodstock and military both wouldn’t fly. They did eighties last year lol. The intersection between what the kids are interested in and the adults will permit is miniscule.
I think many people here are involved in education, or keep abreast of education-related issues, and have started to think this hypersensitivity is widespread, unavoidable, the new normal.
But you get outside of American and Canadian education and you’ll find plenty of people who could encounter implied binary gender roles or a pair of cop sticks without having a meltdown …the fact that there seems to be zero outrage over the Burger King jalapeno chicken fries signs and packaging would seem to support this.
And go abroad and you’ll find entire countries where nobody is losing sleep thinking about who gets to decide at what point a hat transitions from party prop to a reason to be evicted from one’s home. It’s not because these people who "don’t get it " are less intelligent than North American academics…quite the opposite…they are smart enough to get their priorities right.
^“For me it would depend on whether people were dressing like someone of a different race. Bell bottoms, fine. Big sunglasses, fine. Platform boots, fine. An afro wig on a blonde or a blond wig over afro, not fine. Blackface or whiteface, not fine.”
Seems like all the characters in Grease are white. So how does a black girl dress like Sandy? Isn’t it kind of white-centric to wear poodle skirts and bobby sox and saddle shoes?
Taken to the extreme, my white brunette daughter could wear a blonde wig to dress as Sandy, or Lady Gaga to use a more recent example, but her black girlfriend couldn’t.
Can only Armenians dress like Kim Kardashian?
Exactly, PG. That was why I posted in #160 that a “Grease” theme is problematic due to the lack of diversity in the cast. When my eldest was in middle school and high school, the theater departments began to have complaints about casting. We have a large population of Indians, many of whom are musically talented. The problem was that most of the Broadway plays have white characters and the directors were often using the students’ physical appearance to guide their decisions on who got what role. S’s poor friend Vivek, who was very talented and trained in voice and dance, was just never going to get the lead because it was too hard for them to picture him as say, Curly in Oklahoma.
Not to worry, he won’t get to play Gandhi either. If he ever does, the guy who plays Lord Mountbatten will win the Oscar in the movie Gandhi.
[-X tsk, tsk, @Pizzagirl Kim Kardashian transcends all gender/racial norms. (also all norms of good taste…)
Question, once we reference, Speedy Gonzales, Kim Kardashian, and Gandhi in the same thread, have we jumped the shark? No? Ok, back to mini sombreros. Looks like PartyCity has a sell! 8 for $3.99!
http://www.partycity.com/product/fiesta+mini+plastic+sombrero+headbands+8ct.do