most of the damn time.
—-This made me laugh.
As someone who loves to travel—a life goal is to make it to as many countries as I can—I’ve spent, you know, some time living with and interacting with cultures that are not those of where I grew up. Here’s my question: what’s the difference between admiration and appropriation? There are many things I love about other cultures, and that correspondingly I despise about Western and often particularly American culture. What’s a healthy way to interact with other cultures? To be affected and influenced by them? To express admiration for their values, or even to critique their values?
Sometimes I get the sense PC-ness, which I’m usually a supporter of I must say, would prefer we not address race or culture at all … but I think not to address it all misses a huge amount about people, as well as what makes us all different, unique, interesting.
Not entirely sure this makes sense but have had this question in the back of my head for a bit, still vaguely forming. Thoughts and comments very welcome.
(I just realized this may read as if I’m ranting at you. I’m not.)
Personally I think the difference between admiration and appropriation is who gets the credit and attention in the end. Everyone’s on here like, “WHAT WE’RE JUST APPRECIATING NATIVE CULTURE AND ART” but are any of these people inspired to go from there to researching actual native artists and photographers from the past or present? If they are, they aren’t being reblogged across my dash. It looks like we’re just admiring the person who took the photo and look at the pretty model and not seeking further context AND THEN AND THEN AND THEN getting butthurt when someone tries to educate us, which is something valuable that we should appreciate and thank them for because they don’t have to and probably in real life no one calls us out and we just continue to walk around 1. sounding foolish and 2. not having a tip that, hey here’s something I could learn more about. I don’t see warbonnets on actual native people reblogged on my dash, either. Are we really appreciating native culture if it’s only beautiful or inspiring when it’s worn by a white girl? (And black girl wearing one on my dash last week? I saw you.) How can we appreciate a group of people we’ve just erased? The war bonnets aren’t presented with any history or context. They aren’t presented as works of art meant to make us question identity or what have you, either, because that would probably inspire people to think more about appropriation and do research and I suppose that would be an example of admiring a culture? These are just straight fashion shots. Hell, I didn’t even know they were called war bonnets before Tumblr they’ve been so divorced from their origins.
I also think there’s a difference between wearing fashion that comes from another culture like a pair of earrings or whatever and wearing something with religious or other significance from another culture as a fashion statement. I mean, by no means am I comparing the two but remember when rosaries were “in” a few years ago? That was stupid. Those people weren’t admiring Catholicism, they were just like, “This looks cool. I’m going to wear it to the club.”
Also? I care about who gets the money when certain things are “in”. It falls under the same category as giving credit where it’s due. One of my favorite rants is about how infuriating it was as a teen in the mid-90s when everything “ethnic” was in, yet there were only white models in the big spread in teen magazines. Not that it would’ve been cool if Teen magazine had said “Brown people are in right now!” and then went back to not including many black models when the fad was over, but it’s hard for me to believe they were really admiring African culture when they didn’t even have, say, a white and a black model side-by-side wearing headwraps and maxi dresses. They chose a dark white girl and that was that. I don’t think they had one in that spread. And I don’t the editors even bought things from actual ethic shops unless it was the smaller pieces that they just use to fill in. The little “WHERE TO SHOP” thing in the back of the mag didn’t tell you about a shop that sold Native goods or make you aware of a small African designer or Indian jewelry designer. The clothes were mostly by major brands usually selling poor imitations of stuff that probably would’ve been more well-made and less expensive had you bought from someone who sold the real thing. If these trends made buyers seek out designers from the cultures being borrowed from and gave us a chance to see a diverse group of models, maybe we’d be having a different conversation. But we don’t. The money goes to the same people we’ve always given it to, the same beauty standards are upheld, images are further divorced from their meanings, we don’t learn anything and the status quo remains what it is.
OK. Totally agree with you, though you said it much more eloquently than I would have. (I bolded the parts I really liked.) I don’t have anything to add, except maybe to say that your thoughts make me recall my disgust at seeing sanitized versions of other cultures when traveling—Americans don’t want to see the real thing, they seem to want some Disneyfied version—and how it’s made me angry because it’s so clearly not real. I’m just going to leave this here while I try to get to sleep … sort of early, for once. :)
