They’re getting their tights in a twist.
Critics are bashing star ballerina Misty Copeland, who began a petition so as to add more inclusive shades of color to the standard pink Apple ballet shoe emoji.
Copeland, 41, the primary black woman to change into a principal dancer on the American Ballet Theatre, posted in regards to the initiative to her 1.8 million Instagram followers on Sept. 21, explaining that ballet began in fifteenth century Italy for the white elite and its shoes are pink to match fair skin color.
Critics say the trailblazing dancer is seeing racism where it doesn’t exist, posting comments like, “It’s an emoji, good grief” and “Pink isn’t a skin color.”
One other didn’t dance around the difficulty, writing: “You’re making a racist-pseudo problem.”
“I feel this is simply too far,” wrote Abby Marie Johnson, who said Copeland backers pressured her to delete her comment.
“People lashed back saying I used to be a privileged white girl who doesn’t get it, when in point of fact, I used to be a foster kid, dumped from home to home, and most of my foster siblings were of color,” Johnson, a 28-year-old Norfolk, Virginia resident, told The Post.
“I just think it’s silly. After I see the ballet slipper, I just think ballerina. There’s no color attached to it,” she added.
“This wasn’t about race to me, I felt it was annoying so as to add increasingly emojis so everyone on the planet feels good. They’re emojis. They don’t stand for who we’re.”
Copeland, who’s married to attorney Olu Evans, actor Taye Diggs’ cousin, and lives in an Upper West Side condo that costs over $3 million — also sparked comments corresponding to, “clearly an indication of first world privilege problems.”
Daphney Hewitt, who’s black and danced for nearly a decade, sees nothing fallacious with pointe shoes being pink, which was “meant to suit the unique dancers.”
“The world doesn’t must at all times must adapt or conform to the politics of black Americans,” she commented on Copeland’s post in regards to the petition, which now has over 22,000 signatures.
Franklin Park, N.J. native Fola Walker defended Copeland, arguing “something so simple as an emoji change and a bunch of white folks tell her she should shut up.”
“I used to be surprised that folks were enraged at something so small,” Walker, 30, who was on the dance team at Rutgers University, told The Post. “It was very absurd.”
Fábio Mariano, who co-founded the social media platform Blacks in Ballet, said naysayers don’t realize the importance of this seemingly trivial step.
“It’s like when little brown kids went to the shop and so they only saw white Barbies. It didn’t hurt them directly,” Mariano, knowledgeable dancer who lives in Memphis, Tenn., told The Post.
“But after they saw that brown Barbie, that made such an enormous difference. And it’s the identical thing immediately, they don’t see it, so it’s not an enormous deal, but once they see it, they are going to realize how essential that little thing is.”
Copeland and Apple refused to comment.
