Gigi is in a pickle.

 
   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.