October birthdays that come late in the month often get the fun of also being costume parties. Especially if you’re a celebrity like Ciara, with a famous boyfriend like NFL quarterback Russell Wilson.
The sports star threw his girlfriend a surprise masquerade party for her 30th birthday at the Warner Bros. studio, complete with renting the Batmobile from the upcoming Batman vs. Superman: Dawn of Justice. Her 17 month old son, Future Zahir was dressed as Superman. Other high profile friends showed up, including Lily Collins, Kelly Rowland, and Serena Williams. Friends who couldn’t make it sent well wishes by satellite feed. The rock star had a night being surrounded by her friends and partied the night away in a fashion many of us can only dream of.
The nerd community, however, took almost no notice of Ciara’s birthday, focusing instead on internationally famous music star Beyoncé, who showed up in costume as Storm from the X-Men, in a flowing white wig, a flowing white costume, and white contacts with dramatic black eyeliner. There were impassioned pleas for Beyoncé to play Storm in the next X-Men film. More puzzling and infuriating were the complaints of “cultural appropriation.” There were expressions of apoplectic fanboy rage on Twitter about Beyoncé crossing some sort of unspoken line by daring to dress as such a beloved character of comic book fandom. There seemed to be some sort of affront taken that an R&B star had no right to be stepping her superstar sex symbol high heels into the territory of nerdboys who get friendzoned by women like her.
That really makes the response to the party crappy on two levels: taking attention away from the birthday girl, and slamming a woman who was enjoying herself in costume. Which begs the question: how does anyone know, fanboy or music fan whether Beyoncé is or isn’t a comic book fan in addition to a bestselling songstress?
