On November 16th, the very famous and current model, Gigi Hadid tweeted just a few days before the Victoria Secret fashion show, “I’m so bummed I won’t be able to make it to China this year. Love my VS family,, and will be with all my girls in spirit!! Can’t wait to tune in with everyone to see the beautiful show I know it will be, and already can’t wait for next year! :) x”. The news was sudden with no explanation given. However, we’ve now learned that the outrage due to a video surfaced of Gigi holding up a Buddha-shaped biscuit and squinting her eyes had her banned from China. (According to Newsy.com). Prior to this tweet, after Gigi announced that she was walking the show, the comments were so angry that Gigi turned all commenting on her page off.  Comments like “DON’T COME TO CHINA” and “RACIST” are assumingly the reason she was banned.  Someone wrote (hitting the nail on the head I might add), “She thinks she’s too cool to apologize. I never liked her anyway”. It’s bad enough to make racist jokes and poke fun at a culture’s appearance, but it’s even worse that she didn’t not even acknowledge her mistake, let alone apologize for it. It shows she’s not recognizing how upset she made people, not even recognizing that what she did was wrong, which is what contributes to normalizing offensive and inappropriate “jokes” like these in the first place. She probably thought she was being Fun! Silly! Innocent!  I guess you think that you can get away with those types of things when you grow up in an extremely privileged society where your race is prioritized, as well as least made fun of. But is she a racist? Probably not. Did she do something that was racist? Yes, and childish as well.  Though what she did was awful, I am glad that it happened. It shows that there is, in fact, a price to pay when you are impertinent and rude. It shows that even if you are extremely wealthy, famous, beautiful and adored by the media, you are not invincible. There still are consequences for your actions…sometimes.

       Me as well as many other people most likely had their blood pressure raised when hearing about Donald Trump’s latest controversy. Recently, there has been pressure to lift the ban on elephant hunting trophy imports. To even consider doing this is appalling. The ban has been in tact since 2014, why now? . There is absolutely no need for a trophy made from any animal parts, so why are we suddenly bringing this up? Slate.com reports that the FWS (the organization that brought this stupid subject up) believes the reversal of the ban will “help create revenue stream for pouring money into conservation efforts to help elephants and other African animals”. They are basically saying that the increase in hunting will raise awareness and revenue to help save the elephants. Yes. When the animal goes extinct, we will all feel super bad and help the eleph- oh wait, by then there will be no more elephants becaUSE WE KILLED THEM ALL. Isn’t it better to get to the core of the problem than looking to the NON EXISTENT bright side of a fate not yet determined? This is complete bull sh** and will not result in significant change for the elephants, except for more of them dying of course. After great backlash, the Donald tweeted “Put big game trophy decision on hold until such time as I review all conservation facts. Under study for years. Will update soon with Secretary Zinke. Thank you!” and most recently, “Big-game trophy decision will be announced next week but will be very hard pressed to change my mind that this horror show in any way helps conservation of Elephants or any other animal”. That was barely a coherent sentence to be quite honest, but what I am taking it as (I may be wishful thinking) is that he is essentially refuting the logic of the FWS.  
BUT, lets look at some conservation facts, if you will.

• Elephants are an endangered species.
• If you kill elephants, there will in fact be no more elephants.
• At the turn of the 20th century, there were a few million African elephants and about 100, 000 wild Asian elephants.
• Today, there are 450,000 – 700,000 African Elephants and between 35,000 – 40,000 wild Asian elephants left.
• 100 elephants are approximately killed each day. This is a statistic WITH the ban. (Illegal ivory trade)
• An elephant’s gestation period is 22 months (a key factor in what leads to a species being endangered: reproduction can’t combat with mortality rates of a population).
• Elephants are a keystone species. (They maintain and create the ecosystem they and other animals live in).
• There is no reason to kill an elephant and if you think there is, you are a horrible and idiotic human being.

I think this is reason enough to keep the ban, and move on with our lives. I would really prefer to keep the little hope that I have in humanity alive, as well as elephants...yeah, they should be alive too. 
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