???

This is the trap of identity politics, in which diversity is characterised only by skin colour. It is the same trap into which Mai Chen has unfortunately fallen.

In virtue of what should you suppose that a group of white women isn’t ethnically diverse? The concept of diversity isn’t exhausted by skin colour. One might as easily use eye or hair colour, or eye shape. Bear in mind that many people who we would see as white have the epicanthic fold, for instance.

Those of us who are white come from very diverse ethnic backgrounds, which will doubtless apply to the Ezibuy models; many of us take exception to this sort of polemic, which just comes across as white guilt. We need more of that like we need toothache.

“…every woman in the catalogue met a rare and unrealistic standard of ‘perfect’ teeth, hair and height….”

You do realise, don’t you, that they’ll all be photoshopped – including the brown women? We all know it. You’d be justifid in taking a poke at that: just leave the skin colour furphy out of it.

“There were no pictures of models with t-shirts saying ‘I’m racist on the inside’ in the EziBuy magazine, to adopt an angle from the Human Rights Commission’s ‘Give nothing to racism’ campaign fronted by Taika Waititi…”

Good grief! I sure hope not. This “racism” meme is another furphy, which is beginning to sound disturbingly like the “Reds-under-the-bed” hysteria of my youth. Don’t conflate societal prejudice and bias with racism: it isn’t. Racism is what governments do: the apartheid of South Africa and in particular the southern states of the US prior to the civil rights movement (also in my youth), are exemplars.

Call out prejudice if you want to, but remember that we live in a polity which values free speech. You may not like manifestations of it, but it doesn’t follow that it should be shut down.

Benn: “Looks like a concrete slum to me.”

Heh, doesn’t it just! Queen St looks very down-at-heel now, and when one walks up Victoria St and the smell of the sewers is pervasive, it suggests a city centre which has reached the limits of its capacity to cope with increased population.

I write plenty about wider injustices too if you care to look back. It doesn’t make these concerns any less.

We need to stamp out racism whereever it is! Good on you Christine.

+1 SIMONM, I too can’t sleep with the Ezibuy scandal and labelling of toilets.

I’m sure that Ezibuy representation would be just up Susan Devoy and NZ Human rights commission. I have noticed the more trivial the issue the more the establishment seems to be keen to take it on.

Serious human rights can then remain under the radar while human rights resources and media can focus on issues minor and one dimensional. The effect is to devalue the idea of human rights and make the public sceptical about them.

Atrocities in Afghanistan by our own forces for example… evicting state house tenants so their houses can be sold, disabled having to queue at WINZ and their permanent illnesses having to be investigated yearly etc etc. TPPA that gives many less future, Kids being expelled and excluded by schools and special schools being closed down. Mass surveillance and abuse of that to peaceful activists not the mythical Jihardi brides from Oz.

Why not do something and write about that because it’s happening here and now in our own country. Feminism was the focus in the 70’s, ethnicity in the 80’s.

For 30 fucking years we have been plagued by neoliberalism while the lefties get bogged down with identity politics and think if women, people of colour and those with different sexualities can get a few trivial gains then their job is done.

Look around people have much bigger and major problems in the pipeline than Ezibuy.