On August 9th, youtube star Gigi gorgeous was detained in Dubai for the crime of imitating a woman. Yes I’m sure that when she got on that plane she thought she was going to go somewhere “dope” as she puts it. If only she knew the UAE and for that matter most other muslim countries were not so dope for anyone in the LGBT community. If only she knew the punishment for merely existing in the UAE could range anywhere from fines, jail time, deportation or even the death penalty.

I can understand why one would think the UAE would be a safe travel destination, considering its the most progressive country in the Persian gulf. Unfortunately that is by the middle east's standards and not by western standards as sharia law still applies in much of the country. This handy chart from Wikipedia outlines just how progressive the UAE is.

Maybe if the propaganda wings of the liberal media could stop lecturing us about pronouns and trans phobia in the west and cover the fact that LGBT people are routinely imprisoned and fined in gulf states, then maybe she could have avoided this whole incident.

In hindsight, she is actually incredibly lucky that she was only refused entry, can you imagine if she made it through and got arrested? More than likely she would be serving a prison sentence before she could even come home.

Fortunately she's home safe now, with the help of Barack Obama and Justin Trudeau, who found the time to check some privileges in the middle east despite of all the terror attacks happening daily in Europe. Its quite funny that they can do this while still insisting on importing those kinds of attitudes to the west. At this point I'm actually surprised they didn't lecture her on how she should respect other peoples culture given the amount of self loathing and contempt for their own people both of these leaders have shown in the past.

With all the privilege checking that's been going on these past two years maybe its time that we checked the ultimate privilege, the privilege of being born in the western world. Because despite what the cultural relativists have told you cultures are not all the same, this idea is probably the most dangerous load of bullshit to feed the people who you claim to stand for.

And this most recent publicity stunt should be evidence of that. In her recent video, Gigi explicitly states she was warned about the conditions in Dubai but went anyway. Relevant point is around the 4:00 mark in the video.

And while everyone, myself included, was outraged over this perceived transgression on a western citizen, she was enjoying the airport restaurant opening just for her and got a private plane out of Dubai. Now typically, I would be the first person to call out this kind of blatant attention seeking, but I'm willing to let it go this time. Why?

Because many of these E-celebrities are either ignorant of the larger conflicts of the world or feign ignorance to not alienate fans. For too many people the superficial world of fashion is their only world, and that is a huge problem. If this enrages enough of her fans to at least see that the same kind of people who denied her entry are the same people who may one day come to take away their passion, then i can't be too upset at this. I hope this serves as the beauty worlds wake up call. Don't let it take something more extreme next time.