Silly Teen Vogue-ers, Fashion *Is* Appropriation
This bit -- from Teen Vogue -- is hilariously sad and sadly hilarious:
In our new column Don't Do It Girl, Jessica Andrews explores the cultural appropriation epidemic at Coachella.
EPIDEMIC! Like AIDS, Zika, or Ebola!
Fashion always has been about appropriation. Appropriating style and appropriating culture. Those lace-up-the-ankle sandals? Ancient Rome!
Yet, do you see Italian kids mewling that you stole their culture? Of course not, because Italians, generally speaking, are exuberant people who really know how to live life.
Meanwhile, back here in America...
The kids growing up now, especially in the United States, are the freest people in human history -- both as individuals and through the technology that removes the drudgery that's been a constant companion for humans throughout the ages.
Naturally, their response to all this unparalleled freedom is to try to control other people's behavior.
Fashion policing, in this case. Here, from Andrews story on that EPIDEMIC of appreciation:
Even when people feign ignorance, there's little excuse. In the past, I've worn a Pocahontas costume for Halloween. It's a mistake I regret, and I'll never do it again knowing how hurtful it is.
Oh, please. I grew up Jewish. If you pretend to be a character from Fiddler on the Roof, should I take to bed and cry for a few days?
With appropriation being such a huge conversation these days...
So much talk...so little reasoning
Like fashion, appropriative hairstyles are now ubiquitous at Coachella. Cornrows or box braids are not a "hot new festival trend"; black women have been wearing them for centuries. When outlets cover the hairstyle as if it started with Kylie Jenner, it's not appreciation; it's erasure. Those celebratory headlines are yet another reminder that black hairstyles are only acceptable when they're removed from actual black people.
Do you need to be high to write for Teen Vogue? It's a fucking hairstyle. Women wear it because they think it will look good on them. If they're white with dark hair, they're probably wrong (nothing like rows of scalpage showing through to make a woman's head remind us of freshly plowed fields). Women with big honking faces like mine don't look so hot in them, either.
Unbeknownst to some Coachella attendees, there's a stigma associated with cornrows and braids when black people wear them.
Unbeknownst to a fucking lot of us, I'd guess.
I have, especially in humidity, the closest thing you can get to black hair while being a white, Ashkenazi Jew. A really great way to organize said ornery locks is to railroad them into some format -- whether it's cornrows or my hair-organizing style of choice: the German prison guard bun. The big reason I don't have corn rows? I would look like shit in them.
There are myriad ways to dress up at Coachella without offending an entire group of people.
There's also the thought that if they're offended by your doing what people have done for centuries with fashion -- appropriate styles they like -- that they're idiots who shouldn't be catered to.
That said, I do suggest being prepared to politely explain yourself, should any of these idiots approach you about the horror you're perpetuating with your hairstyle.
I am not optimistic about the generations coming up.
Oh, and hilariously, at that Teen Vogue link, there are a bunch of videos with up-talking girls expressing their horror about the "cultural appropriation" through fashion.
What's especially hilarious is going to the video and spotting all the styles these historical illiterates have copped from others.
For example, the nose ring on one of the black women -- which always gives me a knee-jerk reminder of black African slavery, but actually gets mentioned in Genesis as being worn my peeps, the Heebs.
With "cultural appropriation" being such a DEVASTATING thing, I guess I should expect to be in fragile mental health over this by Saturday!
Also, as @CHSommers (from whom I found this link) notes:
Dear #coachella attendees:
— Christina Sommers (@CHSommers) April 21, 2017
Wear what you want.Cultures that don't appropriate die. Dont listen to scolds @TeenVogue https://t.co/3rg29eGJoO
Can we discuss the real travesty?
Going from this:
http://www.hollywoodtake.com/sites/default/files/styles/large/public/2016/07/14/kylie-jenner-and-after-photos_0.jpg?itok=iTWBZHo3
Ppen at April 22, 2017 1:39 AM
TO this
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/COA675NXAAA-Umz.jpg
Ppen at April 22, 2017 1:41 AM
I liked pictures of Kylie btw, the one in the black and white braids.
Teen girls where literally exploding their lips with suction cups trying to look like her.
Ppen at April 22, 2017 2:01 AM
*linked not liked.
Here's her sister Kim, before and after:
https://beautyeditor.ca/.image/t_share/MTIxNDI3Mjk2MTQ4ODE3NDIx/kim-kardashian-before-and-after.jpg
Ppen at April 22, 2017 2:03 AM
They like the soggy diaper fake butt look:
https://pmchollywoodlife.files.wordpress.com/2016/11/khloe-kardashian-shows-booty-new-instagram-pics-haters-lead.jpg?w=600
Ppen at April 22, 2017 2:06 AM
Yes it's very obvious the Kardashians/Jenners steal from black women and commercialize it at Coachella and everywhere else.
But honestly they look atrocious doing it and their fans are mostly teen girls for a reason, TEEN VOGUE.
It's not racism so much as teenagers with awful awful taste fueling this shit.
I find Kylie Jenners transformation to look ethnic fuckinnngggggggg terrifying. Her parents are real pieces of shit to allow a 17 year old to do that and hook up with a pedo at 14.
Ppen at April 22, 2017 2:28 AM
My god, the whining. It's endless.
Gog_Magog_Carpet_Reclaimers at April 22, 2017 7:36 AM
Wow, Ppen. These girls were actually attractive human women before they did this to themselves. I can just hear the discussion in that house about how old you have to be before you get your face surgically revised.
Her "parents" are total pieces of shit.
That butt thing is crazy.
I agree with you -- it's teenagers with awful taste fueling this shit.
Amy Alkon at April 22, 2017 7:39 AM
I would be just fine if all the white kids stopped appropriating gansta culture. Seriously WTF?
There are no new clothing styles, it has all been done. Any time you get dressed, you are appropriating someone's culture. Pants? Invented by the Persians and the Chinese. Haircuts? Every style has been tried--check out ancient art work. Hipster beards? Cavemen.
cc at April 22, 2017 7:45 AM
"She absurdly believes that she can be healthy at the shocking weight of 280lbs" -it's a living, like the fembot-making Kardashian surgeries.
Article in Areo: Body positivity is killing women
https://areomagazine.com/2017/04/20/body-positivity-is-killing-women/
Amy Alkon at April 22, 2017 7:46 AM
Moldylocks did the same thing. Sad.
Gog_Magog_Carpet_Reclaimers at April 22, 2017 7:48 AM
Growing up in the South, I definitely saw how black women were targeted for their traditional African hairstyles. It's also why many older black women still swear by wigs and straighteners.
But no one has ever explained to me how bullying a white woman for wearing cornrows is going to somehow rectify the bullying that black women have historically experienced. Maybe we should all just stop caring how other people wear their hair. This isn't as hard as TEEN VOGUE makes it out to be.
Jay Hall at April 22, 2017 8:13 AM
I love the New Orleans black Mardi Gras Indian tradition and think they look magnificent, but one of these days someone is going to say, "Hey, wait a minute," and all hell is going to break loose.
http://houseofdanceandfeathers.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/mardi-gras-indians.jpg
Kevin at April 22, 2017 10:31 AM
There's so much millennial entitlement in that TEEN VOGUE piece. The racism black and Native American people have endured is real. Scolding white people for wearing cornrows or headdresses doesn't do anything to resolve or rectify it. It's the epitome of useless virtue signaling.
And I guarantee you that the majority of black and Native people don't care. I've discussed "cultural appropriation" with my black and Latino students before. Not a single one of them cared at all whether or not Kim Kardashian was wearing cornrows. This is a non-issue made up by coastal writers with too much time on their hands.
Jay Hall at April 22, 2017 11:25 AM
How many minorities sit on the board of Condé Nast?
KateC at April 22, 2017 2:25 PM
The whole article reeks of self-indulgence. "White privilege" is something only people who have led a privileged life can come up with. It lets them think they're in touch with and conscious of the travails and problems of people beneath them, even if they have to make up the problems in order to give themselves a talking point.
If a group of poor Hindi women are telling you not to "appropriate" a sari because doing so mocks them, that's one thing, but if a "pop feminist" is telling you not to, that's just a pot-stirrer hunting up a headline for her next article.
An article that assigns way too much influence to a pop festival.
Conan the Grammarian at April 22, 2017 3:22 PM
Any hair problem is a First World Problem.
Lsomber at April 23, 2017 9:13 PM
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