Understanding Cultural Appropriation

Cultural Appropriation : "the act of taking or using things from a culture that is not your own, especially without showing that you understand or respect this culture."

                                                                                                                   - Cambridge Dictionary 

Admittedly, cultural appropriation is not something I really understood until a few years ago. When I was at college we had to undergo a research project , and it was then that I decided to research further into cultural appropriation.  Prior to that I'd say I was ignorant towards the issue, I never understood how it was offensive and thought people were overreacting. However, once i began to educate myself on the topic I began to understand the problem of it.

There were two people who initially sparked my interest in the topic - Zendaya and Amandla Stenberg. At the time I was doing my research project there was controversy around comments TV presenter, Giuliana Rancic made regarding Zendaya's hairstyle to the 2015 Oscars. I will leave a link to the story at the end of this post in case you're not aware of it!

 After this incident happened I completely agreed that Giuliana's comments were wrong, and offensive, and it got me thinking about other occasions of cultural appropriation that I had previously ignored. For instance, wearing Bindis to festivals. Bindis are a part of Hindu culture, however they are constantly worn as fashion accessories. I admit, when I first heard people were offended by this I didn't understand why, I thought how can you be offended that people are appreciating your culture? But I now know that that isn't the case. If people of that culture are telling us they are offended who are we to tell them not to be?

Quite frankly, taking these things from other cultures and profiting from them is a power move, as a dominant culture we feel we can take these things and completely ignore the significant meanings behind them, which contribute to harmful stereotypes and misconceptions. For many years, people have been degraded for wearing items such as Bindis, as well as people of colour for their hairstyles etc. and now they've been taken from them and deemed fashionable.

Cultural appropriation is an ongoing issue, one thing I see constantly is fast fashion companies selling "Oriental" dresses. Again, items from other cultures are not yours to take to dress up in, or wear to festivals!

I think the issue is, so many people are still unaware of how big the problem is, and they don't realise that it's offensive.  Hopefully, people will continue to speak out about this issue and educate others on the subject.

I'd also recommend watching this video Amandla Stenberg made, as I mentioned earlier she is one of the reasons I began to educated myself further on the topic.- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O1KJRRSB_XA

Rach x x x

*Link to Zednaya and Guiliana story - https://people.com/tv/zendaya-blasts-giuliana-rancic-for-criticizing-her-oscars-dreadlocks/