Offended by love... & how do I explain that to my children?

 

Years and years ago—and it was the 90s—I had very long hair. 

It was spotless, clean, fabulous. There was nothing wrong with my long, long, Rapunzel hair. It was curly. My lover would curl it even more around her finger. (The touch of love, I used to call that.) It looked great. 

 

One day, I was in the supermarket. Which is a mistake, obviously. But sometimes you cannot help yourself. Anyway, I was there. My hair was with me. Minding our own damn business. Not a care in the world. 

At some point, between deciding if "donuts" is a food group and murdering the produce-guy, some little girl—she must have been four years old or something—was staring at me as if I was a turd turned bad or something—you get the picture, right? Anyway, I gave her the evil stare and she ran up to her mother. I accidently overheard her say: "boys are not allowed to have long hair, are they?"

Look, I get that the kid was only four years old. The world doesn’t make sense to her, yet. I get that. However, I could not have been prepared for the shocker that came out of her mother's mouth. "No, boy shouldn't have long hair." 

Let me take you back to an earlier remark: "it was the 90s"!  

 

How can you justify "boys shouldn't have long hair" in the 90s? You cannot.  

 

And that's when the whole world went wrong.  

 

Isn't it up to the parents to pave a path of tolerance and understanding for their children? Shouldn’t that mother—obviously high on the latest edition of the Bible—have said: "Look, Stacy (or Wendy, Gwendolyn, deep-tragic-I-should-have-aborted-you-Monica), everyone is entitled to wear whatever they chose to wear, grow their hair, have opinions"? Instead, that mother paved a path of "girls only wear skirts, boy shouldn't have long hair, heterosexuality is the only normal, everyone who is different is a Satanist." 

 

A couple of weeks ago, Suit Supply launched their spring campaign, which lost them 14,000 followers on Instagram. In 2018. 

This campaign exists of posters of two men kissing. 

 

 

Yes, I was as shocked as you are. 

Two men kissing? In 2018? How dare they?! 

 

Now, according to Normalcy, Suit Supply has to answer one of the most important questions: "how do I explain this to my children?" Again, in 2018.  

 

Let me ask that question myself. How do I explain to my child (I only have one) that a poster of two men kissing, covered with badly painted Swastika's is normal? How do I explain it is normal to paint over a poster because people are obviously offended by Love? How do I explain that everything that isn't a TV-watching, white-supremacy, homophobe clone of whatever is set as "normal", must be ridiculed and banned from our streets-of-biblical-safety? 

In 2018? 

 

In 2018. With all we know, all we learned from our pasts.  

‘Hardly anyone in the Netherlands will admit to having a problem with gay men, but one in three people in the Netherlands consider seeing two men kissing to be offensive. Those are the hard facts,’ to quote spokesman Philip Tijsma. In 2018? 

Yes. In 2018.  

 

I'm still trying to figure out how to tell my child why Trump is in power, why there's still war on a planet with this much accessible information underneath our fingertips. Behind the screens of our telephones, for God's sake. Why people continue polluting the planet, knowing the consequences.

And now I have to explain that you cannot show anyone, who you love. And that it's wrong to publicly kiss when your suits don't match, I guess. 

 

I'm already glad these two men don't have long hair... 

 

 

other Suit Supply campaigns