I’m a white male. Many years ago (70s), I owned a dashiki. I was in my late teens, early twenties. I liked it. I also had at various times, a shirt that purported to be a traditional Native American garment, what can only be described as a dress [ wore it to church!!! ], army surplus blazers, a panama hat, all kinda boots. Colors and patterns I probably wouldn’t consider wearing today – Black is the new black –
For the record: I’m not righteously indignant, merely bemused. I have little to no tolerance for howls of “cultural appropriation!! Bad!”
At the same time, I’m not unaware of the zeitgeist, and I see no need to deliberately inflame when there is no good reason to do so.
I’m a WASP American, and I’ve lived basically all of my adult life in the Asia-Pacific, Middle East, and Africa. My collection of art and tchotchkes from developing countries is extensive, to say the least.
I’m good with cultural appreciation. That doesn’t mean turning a blind eye to cultural insensitivity.
It’s not what you put on stuff, it’s what you put in stuff.
I wouldn’t get all spun out over this particular dress. There are more serious things going on than some lady taking an apparent selfie inside her own house.
Who “owns” culture, exactly? Who determines who else is entitled to wear this fabric? I’ve been in African dance classes, taught by native-born Africans who were master dancers from national West African ballet companies, and had other class participants take offense, loudly and publicly, right in front of the teacher, because there were “europeans” in the class. I just stuck to learning the steps which were so complicated it took all my effort not to trip over my own feet.
How dare non-Euros wear European black-suit-and-tie ensembles! Cultural theft!
Responding to criticism of Anglo women with a burrito wagon in Portland OR, Ask A Mexican said,
I can claim some Native American ancestry but my dressing traditionally would be ludicrous, not thieving. Would I be culturally appropriating or just a liar to claim I made Navajo silver-and-turquoise jewelry… which is totally nontraditional? (cite)
Put down that fried-bread taco, Kemosabe. It ain’t for your kind.
Bullshit. Of your examples, three are artistic performance costumes, and the fourth is a tiny tribe with virtually no exposure to mainstream culture.
To make sure my memory wasn’t being selective, before posting I looked at Youtube street/market views of several African cities. Not a knee in sight – all ladies in long skirts. I guess the reed dancers were someplace else
I suspect you overgeneralize. Africa is a rather large continent with rather a large variety of peoples and cultures. I could find Youtube street/market views of several N. American cities with zero adult female knees visible. Proves nothing.
Back to cultural appropriation. How dare Africans wear tee-shirts and Levis!?!
In general, women traveling in Africa are advised to keep their legs covered, by many travel publications,including USA Today: “Wear pants or long skirts when traveling in Africa. Select pants made from comfortable, breathable materials such as denim or khaki. Avoid short skirts and shorts, which leave your legs vulnerable to mosquitoes and are considered immodest on women. Men should also avoid wearing shorts, as they are traditionally only worn by schoolchildren in many African nations.”
A miniskirt ban in Uganda is being disputed, but a skirt above the knees will attract plenty of unwanted attention. Similar incidents in Johannesburg of short-skirted women being attacked by self-styled fashion police. If you’re smart, you just don’t offend modesty.
No, those are thetraditional clothes of unmarried young women in those tribes.
The reed dance is not just an artistic performance, it’s an entire cultural event.
But hey, thanks so much for explaining my own country’s cultures to me, white foreigner…
I only posted 3 examples.
And the Himba, which is who I assume you’re referring to, have *plenty *of cultural exposure. They’re not some isolated folk. They are also a very popular tribe with Westerners, being considered quite photogenic, so they get a lot of exposure to other cultures.
Plus 50 000 is not “tiny”.
Of course, rules* for foreigners* for particular countries means all of Africa follows those rules, including all the natives :rolleyes:
You mention the Jo’burg miniskirt attacks. Which were really sexual assaults, not traditional cultural outrage even though couched in those terms. And the response was this.
Where did you get the photo? Obviously not any major fashion or retail site.
Almost all the “companies” selling cheap fashion via Facebook are total scams that don’t send the item at all.
They use whatever photos they can find. One of my good friends was used as a photo for a funeral insurance scam. She’d posted it on instagram, semi-locked - and she did look really shocked, it was a great expression. One of her friends must have shared it and made it public. She popped up everywhere for a while, but she got no payments and had no idea she was selling funeral insurance. Her image was being used, legally, by fraudsters.
This looks like some woman took a selfie wearing a dress. Don’t know where she got it from, but it definitely doesn’t look like she was taking this photo as a professional publicity shot. It looks like the kind of photo I used to take when my friends and I had a “Friday frocks” thing going, where we would wear nice clothes even if we were just going out to walk the dog, because it’s fun to wear nice clothes sometimes.
There are really good odds that the headless woman in the ad campaign has nothing to do with the company using her image at all.
The “45% off” bit makes it certain that this is a scam site, and they will be gouging people, and the African imagery, TBH, is not the worst part of that.
Of course,no social rule applies everywhere. rolleyes But if you are not aware of the rules, it is wise to err on the side of conservative. And those of us discussing the OP most empathically do not know what part of Africa the wearer is likely to be judge.
I haven=t been in RSA post-Apartheid, but a wild guess would be that some customs are still leftovers from when Africans did not make them.
As I said above, Africa is huge and varied. You can’t make many sweeping generalization about it. The Muslim strictures of dress on women in Somalia, for example, don’t apply in most of Nigeria. You will see women’s knees on the the street of Lagos–maybe not as much as in the States, but you will see it.
Even within one country, the cultural norms vary a lot between urban and rural areas, among tribes, etc. You can’t make such broad statements about the U.S., either, except for maybe something like extreme, like: “You won’t see people walking around naked in the U.S. Not a butt in sight.”
for some reason, this discussion reminds me of an unusual incident that happened 20 or so years ago in Palmdale (about 15 minutes from here) ca the main street was backed up for 20 minutes by an "a blondish braided caucasian woman walking down the street wearing nothing but a pair of high top shoes and sunglasses
Well when the LA county sheriffs department noticed the traffic stall and stopped the woman they had to get an interpreter from the local college because spoke a local dialect of a language native to Africa and found out shed just moved here for a job and since it was about 110 she thought it was like her home where l you didn’t wear much if anything at all in the summer heat and was advised it wasn’t so over here
what made the story even amusing was the writer was a bit shocked that there white African natives that weren’t English or South African
…but still feel free to make sweeping statement about what is and isn’t worn in all of Africa.
And then inexplicably double down when an actual African points out you’re wrong to make sweeping statements that are just another damned round of “Africa is a country”
OK, take your wife to a random place in Africa with just shorts and minislirts in her baggage. Like South Africans do when touring the continent. You’ll get along fine with the locals. If anyone tells you it’s not gonna be just like Dallas, they’re making sweeping generalizations. Even though Cape Town IS pretty much like Dallas.
I said nothing about “a random place in Africa”, I mentioned *specific *groups who are in *specific *places. Which was already enough to counter your “no woman in Africa…” bullshit.
The key thing here is that your original statement was flat-out shown to be wrong, and *for some reason *you can’t just say “I was wrong, I over-generalized, I spoke bullshit.” Instead you doubled down on it. And show your paternalistic ass with your “tiny tribe” nonsense.
Well, I say “for some reason,” as though it’s a big mystery as to what you think gives you the privilege to do that, and think no-one will call your bullshit.
This story makes absolutely no sense. How would someone be recruited for a job in California if all they spoke was a local African dialect? And no, there aren’t Caucasians native to sub-Saharan Africa who aren’t descendants of European colonists (which may include French, Portuguese, and others). Albinos occur at a substantial frequency in some places, but these people would not be mistaken for Caucasians.
While there are a few places in Africa where people might wear little clothing, no one who was acculturated enough to wear high top shoes and sunglasses would think of walking around wearing only that in any city, even one in Africa.
Isn’t there a big, well-known nudist colony in Palmdale? Sounds like an honest mistake, for sure. Yep.
Of course you said nothing about a random place, because your argument applies only among a few thousand remote tribesmen, who are not going to be exposed to the lady wearing the dress in the OP. You should be addressing the point I made, if you want to keep throwing the word bullshit in every paragraph.