Imagine, if you will, a classroom circus where every grievance gets a standing ovation and logic took a permanent vacation sometime around the ’70s. The recent uproar in academia over perceived slights and imagined offenses has folks rolling their eyes harder than a bowling ball down a lane. In comes a modern example of this ongoing drama—right out of a comedy skit, mind you—where protest culture is a full-length feature film folks can’t stop watching, even if it’s mostly the same rerun.
The stage is set with a class, slated to deliver an art lesson, turned battleground over the representation in a nude modeling session. One vocal student took to the floor—not to express amazement at the artistic intricacies—but to decry what was boldly stated as patriarchal oppression because the model didn’t check all boxes on the supposed equity and diversity checklist. You’d think somebody handed them a script straight out of a 20-year-old comedy sketch, and rewrote nothing, because why mess with perfection, right?
Cue the rallying cry for diversity—at least in terms of models—complete with calls for inclusion ranging from various body types to the entire rainbow of identities. Memorable as it might be for a Saturday Night Live skit, one’s left to wonder about the feasibility of casting calls based on criteria that would empty a small zoo or confuse a casting agent. Good luck finding the perfect candidate without repainting the art room floor with controversy! But let’s not kid ourselves, making people laugh (or groan) seems to be half the point these days.
Of course, painting this chaos as some form of new wave protest might be a fool’s errand, because this cycle is about as cutting-edge as a rotary phone. The same cries for justice and the feverish pointing out of non-conformities in traditional structures have been the bread and butter of progressives for, well, ages. It’s a bit of a broken record, playing the oppression tune for anyone with ears to lend, only now with fresh faces reciting old scripts.
Folks looking for an actual solution or a reasoned discussion? They’re probably waiting in the wings while every fleeting spotlight moment thrives on manufactured outrage. Dial back to reality, and it’s clear: perhaps what’s really missing isn’t a cast of differently colored models but rather a brushstroke of perspective on how real progress doesn’t come from simply renaming the same tired acts and adding confetti. But then again, if circus tricks bring back the audiences, who’s to argue with ticket sales, right?
