Barbara Evans, Editor, Esthers Trumpet
I woke up this morning to see the Alabama hoop skirt brigade on NBC news, and once more heard, from a national perspective, the controversy about young Alabama women wearing the fashion that has come to represent the old south for the Inaugural Parade. My friends and I have discussed this, and it seems I am the only one who takes any kind of offense. Offense really isn’t the right word. It’s true that the hoop skirt get-up represents a period where African Americans were held in bondage, and it also represents an era where all women were second class citizens. I realize, however, that these young women do not mean to offend, nor do they mean to carry us back to our sad past.
However, just as I would say something to a young woman in church who has a mini skirt or super cleavage, I would say to these young women that they are exhibiting extreme bad taste. I want to ask the parents of the young Black women involved in this exhibition, “What are you thinking”? But it is just as appropriate to ask the parents of the white girls what they are thinking as well. That era, so fondly thought of by some, represented oppression of anyone who wasn’t a rich white male. The rest of us either want to forget the past, or learn from it.
And hey, how do you visit the rest room in a hoop skirt?
It just seems to me that we citizens of Alabama are very talented in finding ways to embarrass ourselves. It’s almost a drive for exhibitionism. Then we get all defensive when somebody laughs at us. Now there’s not too much wrong with a little pageantry, a little theatre. But we go over the line, almost every time. We seem to be the epitome of tacky.
Now to be fair, I have stepped over the line once or twice. Some may say an old woman with nose jewelry and a tattoo is tacky. But when you look at me, those aren’t the first things you notice. I mean you can’t compare a tiny nose stud to a hoop skirt. I got criticized when I wore African clothing. And it was….unusual…
My women friends have no problem telling each other what looks good and what doesn’t. We have to do this with our girls, who sometimes lean towards the tacky with the too tight clothing or major exposure. Now these young women with the hoop skirts are simply trying to represent Alabama with southern pageantry. There should have been an adult who could analyze the situation and decide whether or not this was appropriate, and what message Alabama wanted to send to the world. In my view, this ain’t it.
The organizers obviously weren’t thinking of the world wide message. The question is what message we want to send about our Alabama. What if we had taken young people of all races, hand in hand, with messages of racial reconciliation, peace and love and a big sign, Alabama is changing for the better? Don’t we know that Alabama has the world wide reputation of racism and violence? It may not be completely true now, but that’s our reputation whether we like it or not. And the hoop skirt thing simply feeds into that unfair portrait.
What would we say if we had a group of young men, exposing their underwear and sometimes their butt in dragging pants and head rags marching in the Inaugural Parade? You can bet there would be a huge outcry.
And you can bet my granddaughter wouldn’t be one of those girls in a hoop skirt, or I would snatch her right out of there.
In conclusion, let me say that the media is making a big thing out of this, and in fact the whole thing has been blown out of proportion. It really doesn’t matter that much. But I find it sad, and telling, that we had an opportunity to shine at the Inauguration, and instead, we are making fools of ourselves…..again. And the person over in let’s say Spain, (other countries know our history better than we do) will remember the state legislator who punched out one of his colleagues, remember the hate crimes in our recent past, remember the hate and violence of slavery and the tumult of the Civil Rights Era, and they will be convinced that Alabama has not changed and that we are proud of that shady past. Whether or not that is true or false, that’s the image we are projecting.
It’s tacky. It’s bad taste. And it’s a clear sign that we have no idea, nor do we seem to care, the message we project to the world. We owe it to each other to point out when we are making fools of ourselves. We owe it to our kids to point out when they are dressed inappropriately. And we owe it to Alabama to send a different message than the one we’ve sent in the past. Because if it LOOKS like a duck and quacks like a duck, it’s a duck.
Photo:
http://www.prlog.org/
