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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?
Er, I feel like this violates the comments policy. These folks aren’t losing their shit over the video because they’re mentally ill. Please don’t.
Personally, I think that they’re crosses that that been turned 90 degrees to the left.
Left, you say?
COMMUNIST PROPAGANDA.
I recently had a row with my evangelical aunt because she started spewing homophobic garbage at a family reunion, so I just stood up and told her to shut the fuck up about “evil” when christians are putting kids in cages and committing human rights violations.
I would advise the same to the rest of the christians filling their mouth with the word “evil” as if that particular word was not the most representative and salient aspect of their cult, and behavior today.
A bit sad I wasn’t up early enough to make the Joy Division joke, so I will just add that if I saw a kid dressed in that “anifa ninja” outfit, I would assume they were doing some sort of Assassins Creed cosplay.
I am assuming this folks going on about how satanic this is are the sort whom assume Satan is responsible for anything they don’t like, so anything at all could be a sign satan is responsible.
And to the one who thinks working for Satan is holding Celene Dion back: Unlike are current orange overlord, Satan actually delivers when you sell your soul. (If the majority of literature and movies on the subject are to be believed.)
Excuse me…No. Being a reactionary dumb-ass is not a mental illness. Please don’t lump me in with that.
I suppose I’m a bit old -fashioned, but it just seems WRONG to me, to dress infants in black. I do understand it’s practical, though. I also don’t like the idea of babies as billboards. It’s not like the babies have any choice in the matter, unlike adults.
I find it strange how people can simultaneously think that gender is an objective, hard-wired, immutable quality and also think that dressing babies in specific colours will turn them gender neutral.
@ Jenn93:
I’ve often thought that religious fundamentalism should be classed as a mental illness, but it’s not, and it’s not my place to do so…. Still, “god told me to kill all of you” is a troubling world view
http://weknowmemes.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/did-i-fucking-stutter.jpg
@ Diego:
ahhh, satan…. The ORIGINAL “Emmanuel Goldstein” character….
When I was in the fundy church, they explained it this way:
If your life is going good, then either god is blessing you or satan is tempting you.
If your life is going poorly, either god is punishing you or satan is testing you.
You may be wondering, as many have, how to tell the difference? Don’t ask questions, just do what the church tells you to do.
@ Lukas Xavier:
No, they’re concerned it’ll turn them into World Communist Jews
@Weird Eddie
I think it bears mention, since Satan is being brought up that, canonically, the Devil is the one who found a naive, naked woman on the Garden of Eve and decided to give her the gift of knowledge; whereas god got a teenage girl pregnant with her son, without her knowledge or consent.
I think we can all induce who’s the real asshole in the story.
Oh David…You’re so behind the times on this one. I stumbled across a fabulous bunch of conspiracy theorists right after this ad came out. I took screen shots so let me compile a list of key words…
I actually had to ask them some questions, but got blocked after asking ” So I just want to understand, this isn’t a satire profile, right? You truly believe that celebrities are secretly part of a transgender-pedophile-cabal with an agenda to take over the world creating gender-less children to use as what? Sex slaves? Just help me out here. So you think Pizza-gate was a real thing and the Hillary Clinton’s emails had something to do with it, because right now I’m terrified…” They gave me some more info and assured me I should be terrified, then someone caught on and blocked me.
I’m still terrified….
dustydeste:
Yeah, they aren’t what I’d dress my little baby in; I’m all about bunnies and puppies and lambs for as long as they’ll allow it. For older children, sure, if that’s what they wanted to wear. That ninja jacket is pretty cool.
Rei Malebario:
First thing I thought of. There is Joy Division merch for babies, though I doubt it’s officially licensed. I’ve seen “Bundle of Joy Division” onesies, and another baby shirt that had the pulsar graph from Unknown Pleasures in the shape of a teddy bear with the caption “Toy Division. Love Will Tear Me Apart.”
Weird Eddie:
What an exhausting, depressing way to live.
Diego Duarte:
In Luke 1, the angel Gabriel visits Mary and tells her that she is going to have Jesus. She assents. The way I was taught, she could have refused; otherwise, Gabriel wouldn’t have bothered telling her what she was being called to do. I’d also contend that the serpent tricked the naive, naked woman into doing the one forbidden thing; the serpent didn’t tell her that she and her husband would not only know good and evil, but also fear and shame. Not much of a gift, in my opinion.
*insert grandhusband joke here*
I can’t be the only one that Rene Angelil creeped the hell out of with going from teenage Celine’s manager to husband.
And yeah, anybody saying it was just the Titanic song didn’t have to live with the eight million teenage Celine Christmas albums playing freakin’ everywhere. She had been a professional songstress for a good 16 years before Boaty McBoatsinkface The Movie. You can say a lot of things about her, but to call her just a one-hit wonder is not one of them. She’s been a grinder for more than a generation. Paid her dues and then some.
Anywho, who’s up for some Trumpling schadenfreude, courtesy of the Daily Beast?
https://www.thedailybeast.com/trump-fans-sink-savings-into-iraqi-dinar-scam
This must be read to be believed. Basically, a bunch of gormless suburbanite Q-Anon true believers with too much money on their hands got scammed in the most hilarious possible fashion after actually believing one of Trump’s syphilis rants about “making all currencies the same” and it spawned an entire subculture of credulous nimrods that sunk thousands of dollars from their sign-making businesses into investing in Iraqi currency based on a goddamned prophecy from a dead South African religious prophet!
I could not make this up!
This morning’s newspaper also provided me with a brand new trend sweeping the globe: Jordan Peterson fan safari!
That’s right, the Toronto Star went out of its way to interview Petersonites and the headline of the story being “Jordan Peterson’s superfans say they’re not who you think they are” was such delightful delicious irony because these CHUDs are exactly who I thought they were: very online white kids from UBC and UofA who got called “racist” on Twitter once and banded together into “Free Speech” clubs in a fit of entitled pique, millennials who find their soul-sucking capitalist occupations too much and needed a soothing father figure, and the occasional stay-at-home religious mom who would be hanging on the every word of Kent Hovind if not for a better snake-oil salesman coming along.
All of this is exactly what I imagined Peterson’s audience being. Why? Because they resemble me. Maybe a little younger, but I’m the Peterson demographic: white male Millennial raised by divorced parents and screwed over by capitalism over and over again. It’s not going to the denizens of Little Jamaica on Eglinton West in Toronto or the closest aboriginal reserve. They have their own fulfilling communities or more pressing concerns than thought experiments about lobster hierarchies.
I can imagine how that kind of Peterson safari would go if it was taken to the Grassy Narrows Reserve:
Please, please, please, Toronto Star, give me more of this. Seriously, this shit is pure gold. I can’t wait until they hit the vein of 4chan holocaust deniers dwelling in some Calgary prep school for wealthy petro-execs. The kind of frat-destined scumsuckers that would put the hooligans of St. Mike’s to shame.
@Diego Duarte
I’d really like it if we got rid of religion in this world
They sure do make a lot out of the brand being called New Order… I wonder how they feel about Obey?
@AsAboveSoBelow
Last I checked Mary’s initial reaction was freaking out because she was pregnant and only then the angel appears and tells her not to be afraid because she bears the fruit of god’s gift. Or maybe that was just a mistranslation in Spanish?
@Katamount
There are plenty of progressives who are principled enough not to wish harm upon other people, nor mock them for their circumstances; however I am not one of such people and so I welcome this gift of the finest salt. Thank you!
Speaking of right-wingers losing it due to a woman making money:
https://www.cbc.ca/news/entertainment/atwood-handmaids-sequel-1.4923605
Yes, Margaret Atwood has written a sequel to The Handmaid’s Tale, and the comments on that article unfortunately include people who believe that Atwood should write about the REAL VICTIMS of oppression: men.
@Diego Duarte
If these were the down-on-their-luck types, I wouldn’t be celebrating it. I still loathe the lottery as a way of scamming people. But these Trumpkins are the default Trump supporter: suburban-living small business tyrants with enough disposable income to waste on obvious snake-oil schemes like this. As the article indicates, the woman they profiled said that the thousands she sunk into the dinar scheme wouldn’t bankrupt her.
Too much money, too little brain.
Pep & Co at Poundland I have noticed have improved a lot when it comes to gendered children’s clothing, they used to have a lot of stereotypical stuff like girls tops with ‘future model’ ‘too pretty for homework’ and ‘I <3 Glitter’ and boys ones with ‘awesome’ and ‘hero’ and ‘boys will be boys’ and ‘lock up your daughters’ but I think they have taken the comments on board now. :/
@Katamount
IMHO this cannot be stressed enough. Sure, there are plenty of Trumpanzees who fit the racist redneck stereotype, but the fact is that the majority of low income Whites went for Hillary.
I will never tire of pointing out how it’s the suburban, middle to upper class White American that consistently votes for conservatism, even when it borders Nazism. Nor will I tire of underlining how many of these “decent and educated” people spout beliefs that would make even the staunchest, most hardcore Nazi blush.
I heard comments such as “forced sterilization for poor people (a.k.a. Blacks and Latinos) should be government policy” from these sort of people, for years and years before the rise of Trump.
“This isn’t who we are”? No, this is exactly what America has always been.
@Diego Duarte:
In the Annunciation narrative in Luke 1:26-38, it looks to me like it’s the angel’s appearance and greeting that freaks Mary out. She was “greatly troubled” by the angel calling her blessed and highly favored, but she wasn’t pregnant yet. The angel explains how it will happen (the Holy Spirit, your baby will be the son of God, blah blah blah), and Mary says, “Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.” In Matthew, we don’t get any backstory; Mary just turns up pregnant and Joseph considers a quiet divorce, until he has a dream in which he’s told about how the baby was conceived by the Holy Spirit.
Yeah. I hate it, but you’re absolutely right.
HE’LL AWAITS
brian – Apparently a good Christian here decided that they can’t type naughty words while cursing someone to Hell.
Satan eh!?
puts satanic onesie on infant. Infant immediately vurps down the front, craps out the back
Instantly loses faith. sigh
@AsAboveSoBelow
I’m not sure how willing Mary’s assent could be; I mean, who’s she to say “no” to a god? She said she was happy to do it, and she might have actually been, but god vs. ordinary human is one hell of a power imbalance.
To those who don’t like the black clothing, to the best of my knowledge babies eyes register high contrast the best, so I feel that given a choice, they would choose black and white apparel for themselves.