Enough Excuses: Appreciate Culture, Don’t Appropriate
“It’s just a hairstyle.” “It’s just clothes.” “I’m just expressing myself.”
These are only a few of the excuses, excuses, and more excuses people come up with when they are accused of cultural appropriation. If you have used one or maybe all three of these excuses, then you might be showing your love for ethnic cultures the wrong way. Cultural appropriation and cultural appreciation are two different things. One is respectful while the other is ignorant. Cultural appropriation is when someone uses things from a culture that is not theirs without knowing what it is exactly or the history behind it. Cultural appreciation is when someone uses parts of another culture but gives credit to the culture and the history behind it, or at least is willing to learn more about that specific culture and respecting it. Cultures can be used in fashion the proper way, but cultures should not be used ignorantly in any case. If you’re still confused with the difference between the two let’s look deeper into examples of both.
“I don’t see color or race. I see people,” said fashion designer Marc Jacobs via Instagram when he received criticism for cultural appropriation because of a particular look he chose to include in his 2016 fashion show. He had decided it was a good idea to have white female models walk down the runway with fake colorful dreadlocks on their heads. By the way he responded to the criticism he obviously did not, and probably still doesn’t, understand why many people found this offensive, and he isn’t the only one that still doesn’t get it. Saying “I don’t see color or race” does not at all excuse a person, because race and color is a part of this world and disregarding that to “Just people” makes you more ignorant. If he had stated who his inspiration was and showed that he knew about the history of dreadlocks and not just used as a fashion prop maybe people wouldn’t have gotten upset.
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