KIDIST P. ASRAT writes:

I read your post on Jessica Rey, the former television actress and current swimsuit retailer, and I didn’t buy her “modesty” angle. I think she just found a niche which would include her diluted Catholic beliefs, her pretensions at being a designer, and a way to make money.

A business, however small, takes up a lot of time. She has an infant and is according to some sites expecting another baby. So how is she a dutiful wife, mother to infants and a homemaker when she’s got her own full-fledged career going? This is no home-based business working out of a kitchen. Plus, what is she giving us? Nothing that Sears, or even Walmart, can’t give us. Except her items are four times as expensive.

She talks about beauty, and mentions God and his desire for beauty in one of her interviews (or speeches – she’s quite popular these days). And look what she’s giving us. Swimsuits! Half-naked bodies, however you look at it. I’m getting tired of critiquing Asians who are aggressively charging into our culture and society.

She is also married to a white man – here is their immodest photo when she was pregnant, posted at a public site which posts photos of pregnant women. Another Asian woman and a white guy (her argument seems to be that he’s Catholic). I wonder how her children will fare? I always say that mixed-race children grow up to be angry and resentful – towards SOCIETY, and not just their parents.

Your readers are trying hard to find designs in our culture which would help their families. Since they are presented with such a limited choice, anything that slightly moves closer to their ideal gets accepted. I don’t blame them. But, I don’t think we have to settle.

— Comments —

Diana J. writes:

I am a little confused about Kidist’s comments about race. I looked her up and found her photo, and I am curious as to why I should be listening to her about racial issues affecting whites when she does not appear to be white by any stretch of the imagination.

Also, swimwear can’t be beautiful? What would she suggest ladies wear while swimming?

Laura writes:

I’m not sure I understand your point about Kidist not being white. Whites, blacks, Asians — they can all address racial issues.

Shefali writes from India:

I have to disagree with Kidist. I saw the video you posted. I agree that she is presenting diluted conservatism or Catholicism. But then I saw the swimsuits – again I have only ever worn a frock swimsuit at swimming class, that too one that was only for women. I will never do that on a beach. And condemn bikinis. But you have to see the swimwear out on the tourist beaches in Asia and the leathery, orange bodies that go with it to appreciate Jessica Rey. I wrote to you once about how I found the whole sun-bathing phenomenon in spite of it’s known destruction of the youthfulness and beauty of skin – really, quite … stupid.

Now, I hardly think what Jessica is selling, those feminine prints and patterns, are available at Walmart and elsewhere that stocks the grotesque “triangles ” which are completely removed from any essence of beauty or femininity. To wear them and to be out in public is to cease to be a woman and become an object. Now going back to my mail about sunbathing – white women are the ONLY race that exposes themselves to the sun, all other women dread sun exposure for the havoc it will wreak on their beauty. Instead of enjoying the beauty of the sea, the breeze and the beach it all boils down to having the perfect ” body” instead of “being” a beautiful woman, grabbing eyeballs and quite frankly no one “gives a damn” about the design of the triangles unless they give away some brand affiliation.

If a girl wears swimwear like Rey’s she will draw the eye of everyone on the beach, as a woman. It might just give her pause, and everyone else. The girls who are wandering around in ugly, apocalyptic triangles will feel not jealousy but wistfulness, the uncouth men in shorts will suddenly wish they were more presentable and so on. On a beach in Thailand littered with European and American tourists I was walking in a summer dress that came to my knees (I was on my honeymoon) so I know what I am talking about. It is saddening but for most girls out there Jessica Rey’s swimwear is ” conservative” and an act of feminist dissent. But it might just be a step that can lead them home. I know for a fact it is impossible to wear anything that is considered ” girly” and not get addicted.

Paul T. writes:

Kidist P. Asrat’s comments on Jessica Rey struck me as uncharitable and not altogether coherent.

1. Yes, swimsuits can probably be had for much less at Wal-Mart, which imports cheap goods from Bangladeshi  factories, to which North American jobs have been massively outsourced. If Kidist is upset about “Asians charging into our culture and society”, why on earth is she recommending Wal-Mart? [Laura writes: Good point.] Unlike the Bangladeshis, Rey is American-born. If she’s not entitled to live in the US, where is she entitled to live?

2. I can understand reproaching a white person for marrying a non-white, but I honestly can’t see on what basis we reproach a non-white for marrying a white. (The determinist view — ‘the kids will turn out unhappy’ — is of little predictive value in individual cases). Kidist’s quarrel should be mostly with Rey’s husband, not with Rey.

3. Kidist is in no position to know how ‘sincere’ Rey is in her views. The argument seems to be that as Rey is running a business, and is Asian (and therefore wholly mercenary!), she must be insincere. Or alternatively, perhaps, that as Rey’s traditionalism is (as yet?) only partially formed, it must be a sham.

4. Let me urge a different view. Liberalism’s victory has been so overwhelming that it is hard to find people whose views have not been tainted by it. In fact, while Lawrence Auster castigated many people (usually with justice), his career can also be read, first and foremost, as an ongoing effort to find and expunge the remaining traces of the liberal within himself. Watching that process was fascinating and instructive. Kidist writes as if the enemy is always ‘out there’, among those who don’t fully pass ideological muster. (Terrible people with whom we must have nothing to do! People who sell swimsuits! Swimsuits that show bare knees!)

5. The pregnancy photo linked by Kidist, while I am not crazy about it, was noticeably more modest than the photos of others in the same gallery. This tends to reinforce my feeling that Rey holds her views sincerely, even if those views aren’t (yet?) fully traditionalist.

Overall, while I agree that there is no need to ‘settle’ or to compromise on fundamentals, I don’t think that explains the hostility of Kidist’s comments. Traditionalists, I’d suggest, have their own besetting temptations like anyone else. One of them is a Pharasiacal insistence on ideological purity — even when existing conditions make it extremely difficult to cultivate. (In that connection, turning to your fine eulogy of Betty Smith, I admit I was baffled by the suggestion, as I read it, that a woman wearing a black dress is somehow suspect, except at a funeral – ? Somehow it put me in mind of Ann Barnhardt’s remark that only one coital position was consistent with Christianity. I have some concern about traditionalism becoming quirky and arbitrary; we don’t want to end up like Ayn Rand, who pointed a disapproving finger at anyone who didn’t smoke). [Laura writes: Now you’re demonstrating some ideological prudery. My comment that one woman wore black only at funerals was made in the context of women who wear black all the time, or every other day. Surely you have noticed that? My statement was not at all comparable to Barnhardt’s.]

Anonymous male reader writes:

I have to agree with Diana here. You say that some blacks, including Ethiopians, are part of Western culture as well. This is true. Some people of various Asian descents are as well, so this was clearly not what Kidist was referring to when she claimed that “Asians” are attacking “OUR culture and society,” since Jessica Rey is obviously part of Western culture (she was born in America and, I assume, has lived here her whole life). [Laura writes: Kidist subjects Asian women to intense scrutiny. Her overall point is that their intense drive and ambition is changing our culture, which arguably is Rey’s culture too since Rey identifies with Western culture and society.] I can only assume that she is referring to race. I have read Kidist’s blog with fascination. Kidist does not admit that she is black and has on many occasions claimed to be white, from what I have read. [Laura writes: She clearly does not hide the fact that she is a light-skinned black! Her photo is posted on her website. Unless you have evidence that she has ever claimed to be white, such a charge is uncharitable and unfounded.] She is not. This is why I generally take her writings with many, many a grain of salt. [This judgment is based on rumor and, apparently, suspicion toward her because she is black.] They strike me as hypocritical. Obviously I have nothing against anyone, of any race, speaking about racial issues. [But it seems that you do because based on no evidence at all other than the rumor that she has misrepresented herself and the fact that she is an Ethiopian you have decided that Kidist has no authority to speak on this subject.] But, even if we were all to agree that Asians were attacking white Western culture, it would not be Kidist’s culture that Rey would be attacking, yet she speaks as if it is. [I don’t get your point. Are you saying that a black person cannot defend Western culture?] That is what I have a problem with.

 I agree that her comments about Ms. Rey are uncharitable and unfounded. I particularly agree with Paul T., who points out that Ms. Asrat’s views on Rey’s “insincerity” are presumptuous, and that her recommendation of Wal-Mart is particularly strange.

 Diana writes:

I feel that perhaps I haven’t made myself clear. I did not mean to suggest that Kidist was “preaching to whites” or that non-white people couldn’t weigh in on racial problems. My issue is with the fact that Kidist herself writes about both African and American blacks and doesn’t appear to believe that she is one, since she speaks with disdain not only about non-Western culture, but about “black culture,” as if she is not “part” of it. I believe that this is misleading and dishonest.

Laura writes:

Kidist has criticized liberal black culture, and liberal white culture too. I don’t see anything dishonest about that.

As for Rey’s marriage, if it is a marriage within the true Catholic Church with the traditional sacred rites, which is unlikely, then there is much less problem with it since the Church and its traditional rites are by nature Westernizing and thus will help the children deal with any conflict between cultures.

Alex writes:

As I was taught in middle school back in the U.S.S.R., Ethiopians do not belong to the negroid race (the scientific term for the black race). Their skin is relatively dark but the facial features are more Indo-European (the scientific term for the white race) than negroid. They have such a large admixture of Indo-European genes that many of them consider themselves white, as Haile Selassie did. In my opinion, if an Ethiopian identifies and behaves as a white and criticizes the destructive, antisocial black culture, we should commend him instead of pointing out that his skin is darker than ours.

 Kidist writes:

Alex is essentially right, although I’ve never said that Ethiopians were white, but that we are non-negroid. And it is a distinct culture, the Amhara, which claims this (as I do). We had a discussion about this at VFR.

I will find the VFR discussion, and also give you a more objective review.

Also, you seem to imply that Rey’s Catholicism (if true … as you say) will help her children. Do you really think that? I’ve traveled to Mexico (lived there for two years), and their Catholicism, the way it manifests itself culturally, is so very different from the French Catholicism that I also observed in France. I agree that the Catholic religion is more “Catholic” than perhaps say the Orthodox, but it still manifests itself closely with the cultural reality.

So, half-white/half-Asian kids will still have a hard time associating with a white Catholic culture.

Laura writes:

I didn’t mean that Catholicism can or should obliterate ethnic or racial distinctions. The true Church, not the Vatican II perversion, (and I highly doubt Rey is Catholic in this sense) does reinforce the primacy of Western civilization and should confer the grace to cope with a melding of cultures in a family.

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