Cancel culture needs to end

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Madison Pettway, Staff Columnist

Lately, we as a collective have decided that when public figures do something wrong in the media, they are no longer valuable to us. “Cancel culture” started as a movement to boycott those who have done something irredeemable, but it has now spiraled into a dramatic series of magnifying the flaws of celebrities. Don’t get me wrong, Harvey Weinstein should be canceled, and so should R. Kelly. But Plain Jane Sally on Twitter, however, who said something silly that caused absolutely no harm, shouldn’t be canceled.

I didn’t realize how serious cancel culture had become until I saw the #DuaLipaIsOver hashtag on Twitter. Intrigued to find out what the British singer had done to warrant such a hashtag, I searched for an embarrassing amount of time only to find out that she went to a strip club and seemed to enjoy herself. She was receiving backlash and disgusting comments from all angles, and accused of being anti-feminist because she was supporting women who “don’t love themselves.” At this point, I knew something was wrong.

To start, anti-feminism would be prejudging these women and assuming they don’t love themselves; anti-feminism would be getting in the way of consenting adult women making their money in whatever way they see fit. Strip clubs are not illegal, and there are many reasons why people work in and frequently visit them. Some women may gravitate toward them because of the late hours or for the ease of having fun while they make money. Maybe some just want to try it out. Regardless of the reason, a woman’s line of work doesn’t define whether she loves herself or not, and there is nothing wrong with another woman supporting her.

Cancel culture gives everyone an ego boost. We get to see people mess up publicly, and for some reason, we think we have the power to wipe out their influence because we just feel like it. There is a part of us that seems to often forget that celebrities are still human. We often put them on this pedestal of being untouchable or larger than life, but we have to realize that their screw-ups are really not much different from our own. Behind closed doors, many of us might say the same things or think the same way they do. The only difference is that the average person doesn’t have millions of people watching them through a microscope, waiting for the slightest stumble so that it can be put on blast for the world to see. People crucify public figures for not opening up to the media, but I’m sure you’d learn to keep your guard up when everything you say can and will be taken out of context.

There are so many people doing bad things that can have a significant impact on the world around us, both in public and in private life, who should absolutely be canceled on a serious level. Let’s not waste a cancellation on a woman throwing dollars in the club.