Culture vs Fashion?

The other day, I saw a girl wearing a bindi to school. If you don't know what that is, it's a little gem worn between the eyes that is symbolic of marriage in Indian culture. I don't know why she wore it, but it really bothered me that she did. It’s a shame when people can’t recognize that somethings aren't about them. Cultural appropriation is not about infringing on a white person’s ability to wear what they see fit. It is

disrespecting a culture, trivializing history and infringing upon another person’s identity

People put on prints and jewelry and not realize that they are playing dress up with other people’s lives. It does not make you innovative or special or smart. It makes you foolish, disrespectful, and an upholder of white hegemony. The pieces of another’s culture are not for us to wear when the fashion trend swings that way. It is not a means to earn money. Putting on a bindi or kente or a headdress does not signify that you are attempting to be connected to the respective cultures each of those items come from. It doesn’t inherently teach you something. It doesn’t make you a part of that identity either.What’s incredibly pathetic is that when some people are told that they are engaging in appropriative behavior, behavior that hurts others, that effects an entire group of people they ignorantly cling on to said behavior. They feel attacked and lash out like a smile child who has been scolded for doing something improper for doing something that is hurtful.