If you recall, Rachel Dolezal was the women who identified as Black, but was really White. She even went so far as to darken her skin, wear her hair in an afro, and lie about her race. But hey, at least she looked fabulous, right?! Or should I say, ghetto-fabulous?
Gif description: Saleswoman describing jewelry to a pair of shoppers, explaining, "so you can do from the tiniest little baby one to like super ghetto fabulous."
While I know that the term ghetto fabulous is about as dated as the concept of "inventing a new style" that has actually been worn by cultural groups for ages before it hit trendy mainstream, I think the concept is an important one to bring up when dissecting the act of cultural appropriation. I don't want to dive too deeply into explaining cultural appropriation, as that is a slippery tangent-filled slope for me to fall down, but I will defer to this analysis on race relations that conveniently breaks things down for you. You'll also find that I include links to a lot of the references that I'm making so that you can make your own informed decisions, and, if you're like me, bookmark them to read for later when your attention span is wider than your wingspan.
And before you come at me for clawing the phrase "ghetto fabulous" from the deep recesses of that storage facility in your mind where you stacked boxes of cringey fashion trends and other turn of the millennia trivia, I wanna clarify how we're using the term ghetto fabulous here. I like to refer back to a throwback article in the NYT that describes the following:
"ghetto fabulous: combining the rough edges of the street with flashy designer style.”
While the phrase ghetto-fabulous may typically invoke images of African-Americans, which perhaps hints at some internalized stereotyping right there, the phrase has become one of the biggest fashion trends for white celebrities today. Adopting traits and trends of cultures without supporting the cultures you take them from contributes to ever-lingering issue of racism. So I’m going to walk you through the four C’s of cultural appropriation in fashion. (Hey, at least it’s not the KKK’s.)
Columbusing
Gif description: Scene from tv series 'The Good Place' where Janet says, "Fun fact: Columbus is in The Bad Place because of all the raping, slave trade, and genocide."
Ever since ol’ Christopher navigated like me on a road trip, America has picked up the bad habit of taking something, slapping a label on it, and calling it mine. And you might say,
“Well, Columbus didn’t realize he had the wrong people,”
or
“What’s wrong with wanting to identify a new group,”
or
“Shut up, Jerica. You’re ruining Thanksgiving!”
See, the problem is that Columbus didn’t discover a new group. He came across a pre-existing group, and decided to rename them and reshape their culture to fit his own. That’s where the issue of Columbusing comes in. Described in this July 2014 College Humor video:
“columbusing: discovering something for white people that already existed"
Columbusing runs rampant in the mainstream media as celebrities like Miley Cyrus (formerly anyway since she went through her "rap made me do it" phase of forgiveness), fashion designers like Givenchy, and TikTok influencers like... god, just pick one, borrow trends from other cultures and then don’t give credit to the cultures they took from. Styles like dreadlocks, gelled-down baby hairs, and bindi became popularized by runway models and fashion icons alike. Yet when asked what inspired designer Marc Jacobs to showcase bantu knots, or 'mini-buns' as he calls them, on models at his Spring 2014 runway show, he lists 80s rave culture and Bjork as inspiration. Bantu knots are an African-American hairstyle that were perhaps most popularized by the black character Crazy Eyes in Orange is the New Black, and later on media mogul Rihanna. We see you, Ri-ri.
The frustration here is that there is plenty of evidence to show when something has been columbused, and to briefly play Devil's advocate, yes - in the artistic sense, nothing is unique and everything has been done before yada yada. But if you honestly care about giving credit where credit is due, you can point out where you got inspiration from while also inviting said inspiration to share where they got their inspiration from. It's a simple chain that encourages others to do their research and properly credit the artist. If I were to paint a colorful quadriptych of Campbell's soup cans, your first thought would probably be "hey that's been done before" but you would also likely recall who made it popular, right? That's the idea here. Support keeping the true revolutionaries in public memory. In this case, you can either refer to specific African practices, or just credit Ri-ri. We've established her as a valid representative.
Costuming
Gif description: Booker from the tv series 'Raven's Home' saying "Am I a joke to you?" with clear exasperation and perhaps some diluted holiday cheer as he is dressed as a Christmas elf. Which... I don't think is appropriating any culture, but I will cede the floor to any identifying elves to clarify.
Costuming takes a stereotype of a culture or group of people and turns them into a costume. Back in 2013, Julianne Hough got put on blast for dressing as Crazy Eyes for Halloween. Cute, right? Yeah, people weren't upset at her for for wearing the Bantu knots, but for actually darkening her skin to better match the character’s complexion. That’s right, ladies and gentlemen, blackface is alive and well in the 2000s. And here I thought we left it back in the 1800s with our shackles. Color me confused. (Yeah I went there). And before you say, "Jerica, your so-called evidence is so dated. I mean, 2013? That's ages ago, you decrepit millennial." And to that I say, the article I just linked is from 2021. The internet never forgets, and neither do I. And now neither will you since I managed to trigger you so much with this.
Another example of costuming is wearing American Indian headdresses. From Coachella queens to supermodel Karlie Kloss, headdresses have been worn as the ultimate hipster accessory. However, headdresses are weighted with serious cultural significance. And not to throw shade (just kidding, I love to throw shade), this starting line by The Guardian saying, "the right to dress like an idiot is a fundamental principle of festival culture" is already iconically on point, but going on to suggest that blindly and ignorantly wearing another culture as a costume is certainly not going to make you seem like the brightest glow stick in the rave.
Even within the culture, Indigenous Peoples could not cross that line of wearing headdress without proving their own worthiness. Think of it as a right of passage, or one of those coming-of-age narratives we all had to read in middle school. Not only is it stereotyping to wear these headdresses, but it’s a slap in the face for a culture who, reminder, had everything taken from them. Wearing costumes that falsely represent a culture shrinks these people into 2D caricatures, perpetuating false stereotypes that lead to more racist beliefs.
So, how does this happen? We want to believe we aren’t racist – I mean after all, everyone here has their mandatory black friend to maintain their street cred, right? Oh, and before you ask, this token is already spoken for.
Celebritizing
Gif description: Kim Kardashian acting as a judge bangs her gavel and says "Eww. This is so cringe."
Celebrities are pop culture icons, setting the tone for music, lingo, and of course, fashion. While there’s little to validate a celebrity’s right as a fashion icon other than fat stacks of cash yo, most of the hot new trends are a result of scrolling through Kim K’s Instagram feed.
Unfortunately, many of these trends are rebranded under celebrity names without acknowledging their origins. Miley Cyrus declaring herself the queen of twerk when twerking existed years before her dad even had an Achy-Breaky Spank Bank is one example of this.
Gigwise talks about how in Avril Lavigne’s music video for Hello Kitty, she selects a limited view of Japan for her backdrop, focusing on sushi and saying random Japanese words, and surrounding herself with mute, clone-like Asian girls. When Avril faced backlash for this, she said there’s no way she could be racist because she loves Japanese culture. Kind of like how you can’t be racist if you have a black friend. Margaret Cho even commented on Gwen Stefani’s attempts to imitate her adopted Harajuku posse, comparing it to blackface on her website.
Other celebrities like Katy Perry, Iggy Azalea, Miley Cyrus, Macklemore, and most of the Kardashians have gotten in trouble for wearing cultural traits as accessories, and often ignore the cultural significance associated with them. Nowadays, we see more influence from, well, influencers. And I'll be honest, I'd rather not learn their names. But I know enough that Charli D'Amelio sends me into a blind rage, and Logan Paul got super cancelled for insensitive cultural tourism. But perhaps the more frequently egregious instance of culture vultures surrounds the capitalization of TikTok dances that got so hyped that not only have they given rise to the concept of "hype houses" that are now a Netflix show (god, what a time-cemented sentence this is gonna be), but also got cherry picked for Fortnite, who then went under fire for not crediting or compensating the original dance creators, who I am reluctant to call choreographers but it seems like the best term to ensure proper crediting.
Crushing
Gif description: Bugs Bunny practically drooling. He's got hearts for eyes and floating hearts popping around him. For those particularly savvy 90s babies, yes, this is a screen cap from Space Jam.
Crushing, unfortunately, can also mean fetishizing. The fetishization of cultures occurs when only certain characteristics are associated with a culture and then are turned into a sexual icon, such as submissive Japanese geisha. These foreign cultural representations are dubbed exotic for being foreign yet alluring. Which isn't the compliment you might think it is when the only time it's easy for some to identify your ethnicity is as a PornHub category.
Stephen Haymes explains America’s obsession with the exotic in his 1995 contribution to the written compendium, "Multicultural Education, Critical Pedagogy and the Politics of Difference." That's right, I just referenced a book. This college degree ain't just for meeting job application requirements!
In his chapter, “White Culture and the Politics of Racial Difference," Haymes suggests that:
"[it is not truly black culture that is being mass-marketed], but the sexualized exotic and primitivistic images and representations it evokes in the imagination of white people.”
These sexualized representations are harmful, as they interfere with how people outside these cultures view and respect those who become eroticized. Referring back to the Japanese geisha stereotype, when Katy Perry donned a 'sexy geisha' outfit and sang a song about devotion at the AMAs, she was perpetuating the stereotype of sexualized and submissive Asian women that leaves these women open for fetishism and even abuse.
Gif description: A man smiles and points offscreen while saying, "That's Racist"
So, how can we stop cultural appropriation? After all, racism is going to take like, at least 200 years to get over, right? Well, The Daily Dot gave a list in August 2014 of five things people can do about cultural appropriation, and I’m just going to focus on two of them, but since I like ya, I’ll even make them start with the letter C to keep the theme going here.
Citing
Gif description: Google search engine results for "How to vet content on social media" with the following results:
Research the source of the content
Avoid sharing text or images without a link that cites source
Ask yourself whether it is too good to be true
Ask yourself whether it confirms your existing biases
Ask yourself whether anyone stands to gain from this claim
Research whether other sources are also reporting the same info
Just like your professor wrote on all your shitty research papers, you have to give credit where credit is due and cite the source you borrowed from. A lot of the animosity of cultural appropriation comes from people taking traits, but then not referencing where it came from so that others assume the idea was original. You don't have to type up a bibliography of all your cited sources whenever you post something, but consider how Facebook, a company known for being untrustworthy at this point, now has a built-in feature that identifies whenever you share an article that you have not opened and thus have likely not read and analyzed for yourself. Ignoring whatever potentially predatory coding goes into place to create such a website function, it's a great way to call out our biases without inherently coming off as aggressive. A lot of the time, we argue with dissenting voices because we feel that our own personal beliefs and ideologies have come under attack. We are capable of change, of adapting our views when presented with new evidence, but it will still take some reprogramming to cement that into our databanks. And that's if we choose to accept that newfound evidence.
We are all entitled to our own opinions, but accept that your opinions are merely opinions, and point to the facts when necessary. And also realize that what may be widely accepted as fact at one point in time can later become debunked as new evidence comes to light. Embrace your inner science fair whiz kid and apply that deductive reasoning as you read each Twitter blurb with a grain of salt.
Communicating
Gif description: A scene from the tv series 'Kim's Convenience' showing Pastor Nina saying "No one wins unless we communicate respectfully." Right on, Pastor Nina.
If you’re not sure if something is cultural appropriation, just ask. I mean, sure, it might be a little difficult to just go up to a random person and ask “hey, is it wrong if I wear a sombrero?” Sure, I told my friend it was fine, but he knows better than to trust a drunken black girl on what’s cool in the Hispanic community. Maybe pick a better source. Some people may not be okay with it, and hopefully, you’re sensitive enough to respect that. Some people may be excited that you want to partake in that culture and try to share more with you.
I want to highlight this exchange that happened on my timeline. I had shared a meme about code switching, which is a whole article in and of itself... for another day. But anyway, I had certainly shared this during the darker times of black protesting and political activism, and to be frank, I was tired. It's exhausting having to always defend your racial identity while also explaining that you are an individual that should not always be lumped with the rest of your race because everyone is different. And I know that now I just spent all this time typing up this post about my experience with my racial identity and that's basically half the content that goes on this blog, but the point is that we reach our maximum energy levels to do so sometimes. And when this interaction occurred, I likely hadn't responded yet because I was, at the time, exhausted, and didn't have it in me to do what felt like a whole speech highlighting the ins and outs of how sometimes people are uncomfortable being themselves under certain scrutiny when everything they do can be generalized down to representing their entire race.
One of my Facebook friends commented asking for clarification about code switching, and my bestie responded with the receipts. But then she also messaged me on the side, explaining that while she did come to my rescue, she was not trying to talk over me.
So I want to highlight some of the great things that took place in this situation:
Someone with a limited understanding of the social/cultural context mentioned admits their limited understanding of the context while also referring to confirmed prior knowledge.
Said person attempts to educate themselves.
Said person reached out to someone of that mentioned background for their take on the context.
Someone unconnected to the background but with a stronger understanding of the social/cultural context taking place steps up to educate and offer what they have learned.
Said unconnected person acknowledges their potential bias.
Said unconnected person presents clarifying information in a manner that is not aggressive, negative, or reductionist.
Said unconnected person not only cites their sources but also references someone of the mentioned background who would have more authority on the subject than themselves.
Said unconnected person leaves the opportunity for the initial sharer (i.e. me) to contribute their insight into the conversation, while also acknowledging that it may not be their place to answer but felt that they had enough of a grasp of the social/cultural context to at the very least share what had helped educate them.
I would also like to say that my response to my bestie were ramble audio messages of me sobbing in my bedroom, having just woken up to the most perfect scenario of racial sensitivity and understanding, and at the hands of the person I have been fortunate enough to call my best friend no less. But you don't need to hear all of that. The moral of the story is that cultural appropriation cannot survive when you give credit where credit is due, and open your mind to being educated any day, every day.
Gif description: Jameela Jamil speaking, "Don't just diversify your feed. Diversify your day."
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