you must fix your heart

Slutty black-haired chicks wearing skimpy silks lounging on pillows and holding up gold coins is...?

Bad. It's bad. Look, it's just bad. There's no other way to paint it. It's bad.

FFXIV Peeps, your Ul'dah character or your Thavnarian character wearing slutty silk and jingling gold chains and giving sultry looks over veils is racist. I know the game has gear pieces that are designed around that. It's racist. It's just bad.

The desert is going to tear up all that exposed skin, you do not maintain a "perfect light brown tan" and your silky black hair is going to be frizzy and dried out as fuck from strutting around in the sleazy 'I'm so hot and exotic and desirable' outfits. It's not cute, it's not hot, it's not a good look. It's just racist.

Okay?

One person mentioned this directly to me, and the tags here (someone else's) make the same very good point.

There is, in fact, nothing wrong with sexually appealing characters, sexually promiscuous characters, or characters dressed in a way that appeals to someone's desires or tastes.

My word choice wasn't ideal, nor was this taken to the editor after the fact. I do stand by the statement that Orientalism is just a bad look, y'all. (And trying to paint everyone who interacts with anything that has Orientalist criticisms rightly leveled at it as 'doing the same thing' just... -_- *sigh*)

Having any character showing off their sensuality or sexuality or simply posing for the pleasure of feeling sun on their face is not bad. My wording wasn't great.

I am glad to see that my 'vaguely thought out oh fuck I can just HEAR what my racist grandmother would've sniffed and muttered disdainfully at the sight of this image post' DID seem to get the point across.

Whoever made this, may your pillows always be fluffed and cool and may you never hit a red light as long as you live.

I haven’t laughed this hard in a long mf time.