Hi Lindastasi!

And conversely, everything in the OJ Simon photo is darkened. Look at the background and his eyebrows––which bleed over into his hair in the altered photograph. I think that that was also an artistic choice to make the entire cover dark. And that’s the point.

To say that it’s purely “artistic choice” is pretty much an intellectual cop out. Artistic choice is very much analogous to personal preference. But our preferences aren’t created in a vacuum. Many of our so-called “personal” preferences were largely molded by the culture that surrounds it.

Bigoted viewpoints against any group you can think of (LGBTQ, Muslim, Jewish, Black, Brown, etc.) were all largely shaped by the biases and treatment directed toward such groups in the culture to which we are exposed.

Anyway, I’m confused about your last sentence. No one is being accused of cultural appropriation in my article. In fact, that phrase wasn’t used anywhere in the article that I wrote.

Cheers!