It’s PLEDGE DRIVE time again! WHTM is ad free and entirely dependent on folks like you for its continued existence. If you can afford it, please DONATE HERE NOW! Thanks!
By David Futrelle
Last week Celine Dion launched a new clothing line for children with a slick but exceedingly strange little video in which the oddball Canadian chanteuse, playing the part of some action movie heroine, slipped into the maternity ward of a hospital and magically replaced the pink and blue outfits of a roomful of newborns with gender-neutral, black-and-white onesies from her collection — before being wrestled to the ground by a security guard.
The creepy ad, and the minimalist unisex outfits themselves — some sporting stars and triangles, others featuring the phrase “New Order” — seem almost calculated to cause conspiracy theorists and right-wing religionists alike to lose it. And so they have, with an assortment of unhinged YouTubers posting countless videos denouncing Celine’s “ILLUMINATI GENDERLESS CLOTHING LINE FOR CHILDREN,” and one Catholic priest — literally an exorcist — telling the National Catholic Reporter that the clothing line was “definitely satanic,” possibly stemming from a demonic dimension. “The devil is going after children by confusing gender,” he explained.
On Twitter, conspiracy enthusiasts and religious fanatics alike are spelling out their objection in countless furious and sometimes all-caps tweets. Some, like the aforementioned exorcist, see evidence of the work of … could it be? … SATAN?
More than a few of the comments have a rather threatening tone to them.
One commenter even goes so far as to suggest that Celine’s famous song from Titanic is somewhat overrated.
While some of Celine’s fashion critics focus on the supposed occult symbolism — with some seeing the plus signs on some of the clothes as inverted crosses — others are more distressed by the fact that the boy babies and the girl babies are wearing the same clothes, seeing the unisex outfits as evidence that Celine is attacking the gender binary itself, conspiring to make children genderless and destroy the family to boot.
While some worry about the world being taken over by the Prince of Darkness himself, this Wall-loving Trump fan thinks the real endgame of Celine’s gender-neutral clothing line is … tighter gun laws!
Some of Celine’s critics are convinced that one of the outfits in the collection is intended to turn small children into budding antifa activists.
A few think the real point of Celine’s gender-neutral stance is to undermine fathers and men in general.
These people have convinced themselves that unisex onesies with stars on them are part of a vast evil plot, possibly orchestrated by Satan himself, to destroy families and possibly the world itself.
How do they manage to make it through Halloween every year without their heads exploding?
These people need a hobby.
Celine Dion is very much not everyone’s cup of tea, but to say that she is famous for ‘one song’ is insane.
She’s sold 250million + albums in her career. Heck, Falling Into You sold 32 million alone, and that was in 1996, long before Titanic existed!
Glad to see Pizzagate got a shout-out. As for Ms. Dion, there’s no such thing as bad publicity, I reckon.
Celine Dion of all people is actually kind of cool now? How very 2018.
Satan is gender-neutral? Funny, I could have sworn he was a dude. Even says so back in the Ol’ Testament.
Céline Dion is only famous for one song? Oh child, where were you during all of the 1990s? Not in Canada, that’s for sure. I can remember her having an endless string of hits, long before Titanic. Hell, even way way back in the early ’80s, she sang for the Pope himself:
Non-binary = anti-male? Funny, I observe that males continue to exist, even without constant sexist affirmation, and even with non-binary people apparently cluttering up the landscape.
These Q(uack)-Anon people don’t need hobbies, they need lives.
The funny thing about this article being posted today is, this morning I heard a saying I haven’t heard since I was a small child: “You can’t be francophone (French-Canadian) and conservative.”
That kind of position hasn’t been prominent in Canada for about 30 years and some French-Canadians did embrace right-wing politics in that time… then two right-wing provincial governments in Canada (Ontario and New Brunswick) attacked linguistic rights of their francophone populations. I kinda predicted that long ago. They start with one group and then keep on going till they reach you.
My sister-in-law is a bit of a punk/goth and would have loved these kiddie clothes when her son was little. Too bad he’s nearly 25 now!
If I recall tabloid covers from Québec a few years ago correctly, Dion let her prepubescent son wear his hair long, at an age where the sex of children is generally distinguishable only by their hair and their clothes, so that if you didn’t happen to know that her child was male, you’d have thought “Oh, photo of her and her daughter.”
I assume that was the boy’s choice, but either way, this isn’t exactly something new from her.
Black would actually be very practical for babies. Whites and pastels tend to transform into a palimpsest of mystery stains.
I think a perfect gender neutral onesie would be yellow, with a baffling object on the front. An oboe, or a floor lamp. That would make some heads explode.
That is one . . . edgy? . . . video.
My mother was a neonatal nurse for many years. When Celine broke into a nursery in the video, I was pretty outraged. Celine, Celine, Celine, I know you need to sell onesies (I’m sure you need the money pretty badly), but is nothing sacred?
As Ivan Stang once said, “Proof that some forms of religious fanaticism have much the same effect as methamphetamine.”
they need serious mental health care, STAT.
So, non binary equals the new Goth? They’re babies, they dont know their gender, they dont even know how to pop in a toilet or feed themselves… Sometimes I just dont get it.
Let’s say I still don’t see what’s wrong in making the clothes genderless and destroying the Gulag that is the gender binary. Us grown-ups could do with something similar ourselves that isn’t just suits or track pants. I doubt we even have a sex if we’re in heaven – should we really have to die just to escape the gender prison?
The right wing are gender cops and deserve hell for this. Girls should not have to be held accountable to guys.
@Mexican Hot chocolate.
They do have a hobby. Unfortunately it’s posting hateful messages on social media and conspiracy theories.
Like, I like that someone’s making some gender-neutral baby clothes but… I kind of hate these? They’re the USSR apartment block of baby clothes – just so bleak-looking. I guess I just kind of object to the idea that rejecting gender means rejecting colour, or even a specific colour.
That’s not to say that no one else is allowed to like them; I just feel like a lot of what’s marketed as gender-neutral defaults to favour what society generally conceives of as “male”. For example, navy blue reads as pretty fluid, but it’s a lot harder to be read as agender while wearing pastel pink or ruffles, and I think it’s relevant to consider why that is.
@dustydeste I agree. Genderless clothes should not look more restrictive than gendergendered clothes do. My problem is typically that only women can wear certain types of clothes, as per societal norms.
My favorite part about this is that babies don’t have a sense of gender. Hell, newborn babies don’t even have a sense of self.
Personally, I think the new line looks pretty kickass, but I wear a lot of black and dark colors myself, so I’m probably a tad biased.
I’ve not really listened to much Celine Dion, but from what I have heard, she’s extremely talented.
@rv
Yeah, it needs to go both ways! I just want to scream into the void lol.
Just feelin’ a lot about how women/nonconforming people can wear “men’s” clothing because everyone knows that the masculine is superior and therefore acceptable to aspire to or whatever, but go the other way and there’s hell to pay.
Says a lot about what society thinks about women.
These people’s concept of “male” or “man” doesn’t just mean a guy type of person, it means a member the privileged class in the top of a strictly enforced patriarchy. So yeah, as far as they’re concerned, feminism and the very existence trans and nonbinary identities is a threat to men.
Same as “family” being at risk of destruction because it doesn’t mean people being happy and healthy and having good voluntary close relationships. It means women being the reproductive class, ie. second class citizens whose role is to provide low-status and uncompensated but critically important labour, children being property, men holding the rights to their family members’ bodies, and norms being enforced from the outside.
dustydeste
Meanwhile in socialist Finland…
https://www.kela.fi/aitiyspakkaus-2018
(The pictured set of baby supplies is government issued as a part of standard family benefits, mainly to reduce the shopping hassle for new parents. It’s also much cheaper to buy in bulk, pay in taxes and skip the retail.)
I’m loving how these bozos equate the plus signs with inverted crosses. Seeing that plus signs are perfectly symmetric you could say they are UPRIGHT crosses with exactly the same certainty, n’est-ce pas?
Also, an up-side-down cross is the symbol of Peter the apostle. That’s why the pope has up-side-down crosses on some of his stuff. (I’ve seriously seen people argue on line that this is proof the pope is in league with Satan).
This is the funniest thing I’ve read today.
(Is she paying any royalties to New Order, though? And does she have any Joy Division merch for babies as well?)
I like it, but I’m more of a goth colors person (common joke on tumblr: Celine makes the only gender be Goth). I actually LOVE the onesies with stars and regret no one to suggest them to.
Tho I think Uniqlo’s baby clothes are also pretty gender-neutral (at least for the teeny babies, those are more by month-size than gender) and those come in lots of colors.