
I know that it is a fine point but an online newspaper, News Channel 8, has a headline: ‘Holiday woman with Hello Kitty tattoo arrested after fight over cat food, deputies say’.
Why do they have to mention the Hello Kitty tattoo? It is irrelevant to the story and yet they include it in the headline.
We don’t have much to go on with respect to the story. The woman lives in the town of Holiday, Florida, USA. Specifically she lives in Pasco County. She is accused of getting into a fight over cat food. She is facing a possible felony battery charge according to the police.
The woman’s name is Shawna Smith. She got into an argument with another woman at around 8 PM last Monday at her home in Kepner Drive. I’m not sure the police should actually disclose that information because it appears that she’s not been charged at the time of the publication of the story.
Apparently Smith grabbed the other woman from behind and threw her to the ground. Smith then started to scratch the other woman. She suffered several scratches to her arm and neck, the police say.
And finally, the police report that she has a Hello Kitty cat who on her arm. I think that last comment is discriminatory in a subtle way against women who like cats and it’s helping to portray them as crazy cat women.
It’s almost implying that this is a fight between two crazy cat women over cat food and that it is all completely mad. And the madness comes from the fact that they are women who like cats. That’s the impression I get from the unnecessary inclusion of the information that she has this tattoo.
One last point: she should not have been arrested. Really it is not serious enough. Some scratches on the arm and neck. Hell, fights like this happen a billion times every year in the developed world.