I’m not sure the difference is whether it’s decorative or practical or even whether it’s a gift to me as a homemaker or a gift to me as a person. To me at least, it’s more a matter of is it a gift to me or to the household. A tablecloth is a gift to the household, not to me. Same for a painting, a couch , a set of towels or a toaster oven. A new winter coat is practical but it’s a gift to me. Baking equipment is a gift to me because that’s my hobby and my husband doesn’t bake, as housewifely a gift as it might seem.
Everybody might have their own opinions of what is an appropriate gift - but to be totally honest , if my husband bought me a tablecloth as a gift the thing that would most bother me is that he didn’t know it would bother me.
Yes. That’s IMO the nub. Any particular gift can be a home run for one person and an abject bust for another.
“Know your audience” can sometimes be a tall order, but as between husband and wife it sure shouldn’t be. At least not after the first couple of missteps learning about one another early in the relationship and then again early in the cohabiting or marriage phases.
Because it’s cultural appropriation in a fairly pure form. Kimono is a complicated art form – it’s not just the outer robe. If it’s worn like a dress, or worse, a bathrobe, it would be insulting as an American in Japan, so why would it be different here?
Maybe I’m wrong and Japanese no longer care if foreigners use their ancient traditional dress however they please. If so, my bad.
I remember about five years ago, there was a small controversy over a young white woman wearing a traditional Chinese dress to her prom. Some people accused her of “cultural appropriation.”
Generally speaking I am not a fan of the whining about “cultural appropriation”.
And, ref @Dewey_Finn just above, doubly so if the folks whining aren’t from the culture allegedly being appropriated. For those folks I propose the same attitude as I have for abortion:
Don’t like it? Then don’t do it yourself. But shut the heck up about what other people do.
But I think the key point at the center of the sometimes-overblown whining of the offenderati is that it can be offensive when there is an object or tradition that’s venerated by its original proponents as a significant bit of their culture and that thing is then unwittingly, or worse yet callously, or even maliciously, misused by others in a disrespectful way. And it is the prerogative of that culture to decide what’s offensive to them. Others don’t have that privilege.
Our modern secular US society has very few objects or traditions of veneration. So it’s hard for us to get in the mindset of people who have deep veneration for [something] as a shared cultural value. Irreverence is a virtue in many Americans’ worldview. I for one like at least some of that to puncture pomposity wherever it’s seen.
I suppose someone making US-flag patterned baby diapers or worse yet adult diapers might be close. Certainly the flail about the famous “artwork” Piss Christ was precisely about failing to venerate something many folks think requires veneration.
To the degree a kimono in current Japanese culture is simply an elaborate but obsolete garment, much like Edwardian dinner dress is to us today, there’s not much legitimate room for offense over casual misuse as a garment. But if they do get bent out of shape, we ought not do it.
However if indeed kimonos are still (or are now) reserved only for special occasions and used only by trained cognoscenti in the old ceremonial ways, well that is a very different thing. We ought to know better than to misuse that, and we ought not be surprised if Japanese folks get annoyed at us if we do anyhow.
My brother once gave me a book featuring a talking dog detective (I think it was “Dog On It”, but there apparently is more than one talking dog detective novel series ).
He said it was a great book. And maybe it is. Much as I am fond of dogs and like detective fiction, I just couldn’t see reading a detective novel with a talking dog. The book sat on my shelf unread.
A few years later, my brother, having forgotten he’d given me the book, gifted a second copy to me.
I haven’t seen either copy for awhile, so they probably got sold to Half-Price Books before we undertook our last move.
*inevitably someone here will say “You really missed out. It’s a great book!”
I think the more utilitarian an object is, the less likely to bother the originators. Does anyone consider it offensive for an American to own and use a wok or chopsticks?
Or how closely the copy is to the original. Like it might be offensive for a woman to wear an embroidered silk kimono as a party dress, but no one cares if someone wears a kimono-styled robe as a bathrobe in their own house.
How about those big furry(?) hats that the ceremonial guards at some historic sites in Britain wear? Would an Englishman find it offensive if an American chose to wear one while skiing? I think he’d just consider it silly.
My son, who is quite imaginative, decided to trick-or-treat dressed as a vampire geisha.
I made him a costume, including a wig (he is blonde) that approximated a kimono. Is that cultural appropriation?
The whole idea of cultural appropriation just seems so silly. Japanese men wear western style suits. I wore a tradional sarong when I visited temples in Java. Americans wear socks and sandals despite having no German heritage.
While I agree culture is important, is not the phrase “imitation is the sincerest form of flattery” best applied to the post to which you object?
I am of Serbian heritage. I couldn’t care less if a person of a different ethnicity wears any element of Serbian traditional costume, though they obviously shouldn’t do so in a mocking manner.
I do wear a kilt, but only when playing the bagpipes (a musical instrument that, while coming from Scotland, has become very domesticated in Canada, where I am from). I usually do so in a pipe band, which is in the Czech Republic, where I live now. All the other members of the band are ethnic Czechs.
Not really, My Mum did use the tablecloth as she comes from a generation that wastes nothing, but for her it might as well have been a saucepan or a vacuum cleaner for what it represented. The kimono felt like a personal gift for her, rather than the house – she wore it as a dressing gown, felt special doing so, and she adored it.
My dad’s background was Scottish. I never thought to try a kilt. How do you identify someone’s ancestry if they’re wearing a kilt? If you’re feeling offended by their dress, then you discover that they do, indeed, have Scottish ancestry do you feel better?
I kinda forgot if it was for my Birthday or Xmas but my dad got me this sorta camo T-shirt with the word ‘LEGEND’ printed on the centre.
it was the kind of shirt my 7 year old nephew would wear, but i sucked it up and decided to wear it, i appreciate my dad for atleast trying but now the only use the shirt made was a rag by my parents eventually.
That really annoys me. A person can actually look at himself in the mirror, see hair protruding from his nostrils, and not realize he needs to do something about it? Duh!
).