Dear Cons: Stop Using Complaints As Excuses for Discrimination
Jessica Nigri, minutes after changing into the cheerleader outfit after PAX East told her the pink latex Juliet Starling outfit was too revealing.
New York City Comic Con’s “Special Edition New York City” event was held last weekend and by most reports, it was a good time. Except for a writer for the site Bleeding Cool, who describes in well-crafted detail her humiliation at the hands of the staff of SENYC. Her crime? Allegedly, being too revealing, but the only logical explanation is that someone didn’t like seeing an overweight person in revealing clothes.
The outfit Dean MizCaramelVixen was wearing that almost got her booted from SENYC.
Dean MizCaramelVixen describes herself as a “plus sized woman of color” who loves to cosplay. While the article on Bleeding Cool is a must read, and I don’t want to rehash everything here, the gist of it is that she was told by staffers that someone had complained about her costume, and that if they received a second complaint, she would be asked to change or leave. MizCaramelVixen pointed out (and the article has pictures to back her up) that she couldn’t be in any inappropriate attire, since there were the usual ass-baring Cammy cosplayers and even female cosplayers with nothing on top except pasties and body paint. But the SENYC staffers stuck to their guns.
This reminds me of the time at PAX East when Jessica Nigri was asked to change out of the pink latex Juliet Starling outfit because someone had complained about it being inappropriate for a con with children attending. (See our article PAX East 2012: The Jessica Nigri ‘Controversy’ — the photo above is one I took just minutes after she had changed into the cheerleader outfit after the complaint.). I said at the time that this was no way to establish and enforce a convention’s dress code policy — violation via complaint.
The latest example, what happened to MizCaramelVixen at SENYC, nails this home for me:
Dear convention organizers, you are one or two incidents away from a discrimination lawsuit.
Establishing a dress code and then either only enforcing it based on complaints or — worse — ignoring it to kowtow to complainers is opening yourselves up to discrimination lawsuits. Any lawyer looking for a quick buck would grab a case brought by MizCaramelVixen against SENYC in a heartbeat. She has visual proof of a misapplied dress code policy, leading any jury to the logical conclusion she was discriminated against because of size — assuming she doesn’t also include discrimination because she is a women and one of color at that.
The only legally proper response that the SENYC staff should have given to the person filing the complaint was “We will investigate and if she is found to violate our policy she will be asked to change or leave.” And since she clearly did not, the staffers should never have approached her in the first place. More to the point any further complaints (none apparently came forward) should have been answered with “We investigated and she is not in violation of our policy. I am sorry if that offends you, but the policy is clear.”
It’s up to you, con organizers — change the way you apply dress code policies now, or do it after one of you gets sued.
