In the 1950s, everyone was suspected to be a communist. In the 2000's (I'm not sure how to refer to the 00's yet), everyone is being suspected of having connections to terrorism. And I mean everyone. The other night I was out with friends from school at our quad-annual Baddies celebrating the end of another quarter. I wore what I thought to be a pretty fashionable outfit that consisted of a royal blue dress, black gladiator sandals, and a black and white checkered scarf. I like to follow trends and be creative with my clothes, and this was just like any other outfit you might find me in. HOWEVER, within a 10 minute span I had 3 different people come up to me to inform me that my scarf was a symbol of terrorism. This was a total shock to me since I bought the scarf from a street vendor in NYC. Oh wait... maybe... okay, the point is that I thought my scarf was fun when in fact I was told it was a keffiyeh, which is traditionally worn by Arab men. In fact, recently, Rachael Ray was wearing a similar scarf in a commercial for Dunkin Donuts and the ad was taken off the air for that very reason. Reporters blogged that a keffiyeh has come to symbolize murderous Palestinian jihad and appears as a regular adornment for Muslim terrorists. News reporters further criticized "ignorant" stylists, designers, celebrities, and "left-winged" icons for wearing these scarves. WELL, I happened to be leaning more to the left these days and still love celebrity trends. I think it's pretty ridiculous when our country is acting to insecure that we have to ban ads where an American citizen is wearing a scarf. I mean seriously, don't we have bigger issues to worry about these days? So I will wrap up with two final points. 1) Rachael Ray is not a terrorist. 2) I am going to rock my scarf because I like it and I paid $10 hard earn bucks for it. Terrorists may have attacked our democracy, but they'll never attack our freedom of expression.
