Okay, a little clarification about my rage.
I got a long-winded message from a follower saying they were going to unfollow me because they felt my response to someone claiming that the bustle was inspired by the Hottentot Venus (a claim, while interesting, makes absolutely no sense in the context of what I know about the history of 19th-century costume and White femininity, which is a subject I think I’m qualified to speak about being a White woman and all) was racist. If a person of color were to address these concerns to me, I’d try my best to explain my rationale for thinking and present it in a logical, respectful way. But the person who messaged me wasn’t. I didn’t have to look farther than their icon to see that they were a fellow White person.
As of writing this post, I have 29,192 followers on OMG that Dress! alone. I can’t read everyone’s mind and know what someone might interpret as being offensive. The truth is I go out of my way to be aware of my own privilege, to understand racism, and to not only make my blogs acceptable, but to celebrate diversity in all its forms. I’m not Mitt Romney, but I know that in the overall scheme of things, as a middle-class American heterosexual cisgender white girl, I’m pretty damn privileged. And when a fellow middle-class White person accuses me of not being PC enough so that they can give themselves a pat on the back for being the morally superior one, it pisses me off.
