Can you
ever level the playing field in the instance of cultural
appropriation of different ethnicities, when it comes to dress?
I
ask this, because there has been a recent surge in a micro trend where young
fashionable
(predominately white) women (and some men) who consume sub
culture,
and therefore follow “alternative” patterns of dressing, have adopted
wearing
the bindi as a fashion accessory. The bindi is a religious and cultural
symbol
worn by both sexes of practising Hindus.
It has specific significance when women wear this
auspicious forehead mark,
signalling,
marriage, wealth, status and spirituality. Worn by people of South
Asian
origin, it is clearly an ethnic marker, and an important part of dress and
identity
for those who wear it. Although its roots are in Hinduism as a religious
symbol,
it also forms part of cultural dress, as a generic decorative adornment
for
Indian women, Hindu and Muslim alike. We forget that India used to
encompass
Bangladesh and Pakistan, and that many Muslims and Hindus share a
rich
Indian culture, where cross-pollination of customs has occurred. Whether
you
want to specify that the bindi is only worn for decoration now, or it is
primarily
a religious symbol. It is still clearly a very obvious symbol of being
“Indian”
and which links it with the women who wear the bindi, women of South
Asian
origin, and therefore it is an obvious marker of ethnicity and shared
cultural
practice.
The idea is that, when the white body takes on the
ethnic markers of other
cultures,
it has the ability to alleviate the codes of dress from “traditional” to
subversive.
Ethnic dress only gains credibility and status in the fashion world,
and
the world of “cool” sub culture, when it is worn and appropriated by the
Westerner.

http://blog.urbanoutfitters.com/blog/trend_bindis
This
young woman has drawn a third eye on her forehead, and used stick on gems, she
also has green hair, I feel this is a way of dressing to attract “otherness”
and “difference” to aide her individual dressing.
The
picture was used on the website of a popular women’s clothing store, Urban
Outfitters, citing bindi wearing as a fashion trend, and that the bindi no longer had any cultural practice
associated with it, belittling the fact that it is a marker of ethnicity and religion in South Asian dress.

http://emzgalz.tumblr.com/post/28193346720/hi-lol-chanel-bindi-taken-with-instagram
For example the bindi being worn by pop stars
propagates the idea that the bindi
is
suddenly a cool accessory, but this is only made possible when those pop stars
are
white and western. They are given the status of being fashion icons for
looking
and dressing “different”. It is this applause for looking different, and the
“genius”
ability of mixing and clashing western dress with Asian/ethnic dress
that
infinitely troubles me.
Because
there seems to me, many British South Asian girls who wear a mix of
western
clothes, and traditional South Asian clothes, but none are given fashion
credibility
for dressing this way. She can’t appropriate Western clothes in the
same
way, because, she is an ethnic minority living in the UK, where there is a
predominant
Eurocentric culture, and dressing Western is seen as preferable,
rather
than “cutting edge” styling. The Indian girl wearing a bindi with her
jeans
and t-shirt does not gain status for dressing eclectically, like her white
counterpart.
She just looks “Asian” and draws attentions to her “otherness”. This
implies
straight away that when the bindi is worn on the white body, as a fashion
accessory,
and mixed with fashionable clothes, it is deemed “cool,” creating a
narrative
where the white body gains credibility and the brown body does not.
When
the white body gains, “otherness” and “exoticness” off the back of
particular
ethnic dress, normally seen on brown bodies, that then devalues and
renders
the brown body as definitely “other”.
Puwar (2002) writes
‘Thus, it
is not only the saree or the bindhie that are exoticized, but
South
Asian women, the customary wearers of those items, are simultaneously
exoticized.’
This
benefiting from Asian womens’ otherness, I argue, reinforces race divisions,
and
unbalances equality. Maynard (2004) paraphrases Puwar (2002) when she
shows
Puwar’s research into South Asian women in the UK and their own
response
to the Western consumption of Asian culture.
She shows that these women respond differently from
British consumers with a white heritage. They feel mixed emotions, including
anxiety and even rage, about wholesale and packaged fantasising of Asian
culture, which for them remains uncontextualised. (Maynard 2004)
But
Puwar (2002) writes more explicitly about the violence it masks and the
rage
it conjures in the women who’s culture is being exploited.
The ability of whiteness to celebrate
versions of marketed difference, alongside a historical amnesia of the violence
endured by South Asian women who have with or without legitimacy from catwalks
in the West worn clothing marked as 'other', is able to evoke an emotion beyond
ambivalence - rage. (Puwar 2002)
A
white person wearing ethnic clothing in a way that isn’t culturally sensitive,
isn’t
levelling the playing field, it’s making it worse, by belittling how a brown
body
looks in it. It is an act of ethnic performativity, one that when a brown body
is
seen in traditional clothes, a very different narrative is drawn. Clothes on
the
South
Asian body are much more loaded with meaning and the constant
navigating
of duality in the act of diasporic dressing is constantly in the background.

Kate
Nash 2012 from the video “Under-estimate the Girl” (youtube)
Kate
Nash wearing the bindi in a music video, in reference to 90’s pop and fashion icon,
Gwen Stefani. Referencing a period of time when the all things Asian were
considered “in fashion”. Bindi wearing became popular amongst European and
American young girls copying Gwen’s lead in the trend during the mid to late 1990s.
The 1990s as a trend in sub culture is making a comeback in fashion, as it
reaches it vintage 20-edyear-old status.

Gwen
Stefani 1996 from the video “Just a girl” (Youtube)
The female South Asian body, embodies the sense of
home and tradition, when
she
is in the home nation, and especially when she is residing in the South Asian
Diaspora
over seas. Where there is this need to hold onto a specific culture; dress
is
employed as the potent symbol of the Home
Nation, which occupies a space on
the
brown female body, when living in diasporic communities. She ‘bears the
brunt
of being the embodied signifier of the “past” of the diaspora, that is, the
homeland
that is constantly evoked’ (Gopinath 2005)
‘Women’s
bodies are often the repository for “tradition”; when traditional dress
is
worn by women, it can be seen as an attempt to preserve or recreate a real or
imagined
past’ Chapkiss (1988 cited in Bridgewood 1995)
Her
dress is heavy with the patriarchal notions and expectations of traditional
dress,
embodying the stereotypes of the wife, the mother, a vision of the
submissive
ever giving woman; an embodiment of the “Motherland” the “Nation”
if
you like. (Sen 2002)
This
idea of “Nation” being projected onto the brown female body means that in
world
politics and those perceptions of how that (now feminized) nation fits into
the
rest of the world, affects how a woman in traditional dress is perceived by
the
Western eye.
If
the South Asian woman is seen as the hallmark of tradition and nation, and
that
nation is by default seen as
inferior, the marrying of the racialized brown
female
body and ethnic dress, immediately marks out that body as inferior in
relation
to the West.
If we can divorce the female body from this
emotional attachment of woman
equalling
Nation, and we bring in ideas of performativity instead. For example
looking
at the brown body that adopts Western fashion (world fashion) she is
then
complying with the dress codes in her diasporic home or “host” nation of
Britain
or the U.S. But her performance of dressing in Western clothes, is one of a
mix
and match of values. Wearing respectable western clothes, is a way to mark
out
a different class, education, and therefore values of aspiration are at play.
But
it
can have the opposite effect as well, say if British South Asian women look
“too”
Western.
Women’s bodies become a political vehicle that
signpost cultural heritage,
tradition,
and also most importantly, the morality of that community. The South
Asian
woman dressed in traditional/ethnic dress, is a woman who upholds the
sexual
morality, and ethics of the diasporic community.
‘A woman’s dress is often
decoded as an indicator of her sexual respectability;
women
are compelled to make themselves attractive in ways which involve
submitting
to cultural beliefs about appropriate sexual behaviour and ways of
dress’
(Coward 1983)
It
is always women’s bodies that become the arena of the home, being the object
of
morality and values, when in the diaspora. So this creates the environment,
where
the brown female body is expected to wear ethnic dress to uphold her
communities’
respectability, and thus marking her body in appropriate attire.
But
outside of the diaspora, Western society holds the view, that the wearing of
traditionally
ethnic dress is proof of backwardness, or lacking in modernity.
‘The
wearing of western dress was associated with a society moving from a state
of
primitivism to one of “civilisation”’. Darwin (1872 cited in Callaway 1992)
In
this way, we can also then assume the universal held belief of Western dress
being
seen in the history of colonialism as “superior”.
The danger of western dress being the symbol of
modernity in relation to the
East,
is that Western/world fashion dress is the shorthand for aspirational
middle
class values, the hall bearer of progression and education (etc) or
negatively,
promiscuity.
In
Indian cinema, values and dress make a strong link and is easily used to
portray
a woman’s sexuality when she wears western modern clothes.
‘Heroines, deities, and
normal women all wear saris and traditional dress. The
“vamps”
or “fast” girls wear jeans, shorts, short frocks, and Western hairstyles.’ (Joshi, 1992 Berg)
Dress obviously has meanings held behind it, in how
we choose to project
ourselves
to the world; through the way we dress ourselves. The distinct ways
and
subtleties in dressing the brown body and what those meaning convey, and
mean
to different people, ethnic markers pointing to tradition, and western
markers
pointing to modernity. Both these concepts are damaging, but they are
there. There is this binary
assumption being made about being either markedly
ethnic
or white, traditional or modern, and between the diaspora and the “host”
nation,
(Gopinath, 2005) and occupying a space in the middle is suddenly a
confusing
message.
When
looking at dress through such narrow binaries, we learn of course the
short
hand visuals of what the ethnically or western dressed body comes to
mean,
which is of course a treacherous and stereotypical view point of what
dress,
on which body stands for.
But
you can argue that ethnicity is simply only being performed to maintain
certain
values.
‘Ethnicity
is a construct, not in some form of continuity with tradition, but rather
part
of a self consciously remembered
past, designed specifically to suit the
present.’
Eller (1997 cited in Maynard, 2004)
The need to bring balance between those two ideas of
how the South
Asian
female body is dressed and perceived, and the double scrutiny she comes
under
– from her own diasporic community and that of “western societies’ eyes”
–
is interesting to look at. In a way, mixing dress codes of Asian dress
and
western
dress is perhaps a way to Queer up a dual identity. (Mani, 2003 Berg).
Queering
South Asian dress with western dress to create hybrids that push
boundaries,
and create the culture clash when worn on the brown “queer” body.
Can an Asian woman ever wear a bindi and be
subversive with it? Like
the
examples I’ve discussed with young middle class white girls adopting this
Orientalist
trend. Can you ever achieve the echelons of cool when you’re brown
yourself,
wearing an ethnic marker. Can you create the subversion?

Do
you think any differently about the different representations of Asian dress
shown here? Raisa Kabir 2012.
For a South Asian woman to be accepted by Western
society she is encouraged to
adopt
western clothing if to be perceived to be moving towards a model of
modernity
and progressive thinking. I.e. she’s probably educated if she’s in jeans
and
a t-shirt. But at the same time, living in a hugely multicultural global
society,
the
South Asian female body in traditional dress, fits into how society can place
you
somewhere neatly, in post colonial narratives. It fits with being and staying
the
same (the implication of “traditional dress” which is untrue as ethnic dress
has
its own cycles of fashions and subtleties that change over seasons and time
periods,
(Eicher, 1995)) and in the way that traditional dress encompasses
traditional
values, and also how that community is easily now viewed as “other.”
When dressed in ethnically marked clothing, it slots
in easily with viewing the
brown
body with Orientalist ideology, about the brown woman being exotic and
looking
stereotypically Asian, and conflating this viewpoint with Asian dress. It’s
an
easy and palatable way of putting someone in a tick box of difference.
The
Asian body + Asian dress = normal (exotic).
Whereas,
the Asian body clothed in western dress, instead draws curiosity, but
perhaps
less racism. Your performative act to fit into the dress codes of your
western
“host” nation, signals you out as adopting western ideas of modernity, liberation
and
progression.
We have to make distinctions between dress, mere
clothes, and fashion,
here,
because there are many South Asian women, who adopt world fashion and
western
ideas of the tailored garments; i.e jeans, shirts, cardigans, and trainers.
Though
is not to be confused with dressing fashionably
or being on trend (Eicher 1995).
In
both groups of dressing, there is a line of perceived homogeneity in ways of
dressing,
be that generic salwar, or a hooded top and jeans.
To come across the real act of queering the South
Asian female body, we have to
take
into account, instances of class, education, and exposure to assimilation into
western
circles of friendship, learning codes of dress that employ dress freedom
and
marking your body in a full frontal fashion, the adoption of sub cultures for
instance;
The South Asian Hipster or Goth etc.
Where
the brown body takes on fully, without any restrictions, the dress codes of
a
seemingly western sub culture. This can be construed as fully queering the
South
Asian body and creating true subversion.
It
is where the two seemingly binary ideas of what it is to be brown and how the
brown
female body is dressed come together in a full clash.
Subversion
of cultures is where the line of an act of dressing becomes and
crosses
over to “cool” or simply relevant.
It is very easy for someone who comes from a western
background and
has
a British white heritage, perhaps from a middle class/privileged background,
who
is interested in “individual” dressing, to then appropriate other ethnic
groups’
ways of dressing and therefore making it fashionable, for example the
current
trend of bindis and commodifying Asian modes of dress.
The case of Princess Diana’s donning of the salwar
kameez, is an insightful one:
‘The garment had to cross a border to become “fashion”, in a way that
it could
never
have been while South Asian women wore it, and the only person capable
of
taking it across that border was a privileged celebrity and outsider.’ (Jones
& Leshkowich 2003)
South Asian women, are unable to do this themselves,
and will only ever be seen
with
the model of Asian person + Asian dress = stereotype, or self-orientalising.
It
brings no new originality to the context of dressing that way, despite perhaps
trying
to subvert a Sari in a new fashion, or wearing salwar kameez with a
cardigan/trainers.
The anger felt by women who wear Asian dress everyday and
made
to feel inferior is something, no one who has never been made to feel
different
will understand, and the white girl’s quest for difference and accepted
“coolness” for wearing dreadlocks and
bindi’s is indeed a violent act of dressing
that
dangerously ignores their own white privilege (Puwar 2002).
Another effect of the garment’s journey was to make
it seem newly chic to those very women who had worn it in their everyday lives.
The irony for them, however was that pride in their garment’s new fashionabilty
could be interpreted through Orientalising logic as a kind of enlightenment, a
consciousness about the value of their garment that could only come from the
Western establishment telling them what was precious in their cultural heritage
and what was not. The effect, then, was that these very women could appear to
be imitating Western fashions even as they were said to be wearing their own
traditional clothing. (Jones &
Leshkowich 2003)
The
subtleties of difference or subversion are lost on eyes that only see ethnic
dress
and brown skin, and are not accustomed to that particular dress culture, or
the
particular differences of ethnic dress either. In order for the South Asian
body
to subvert their own dress, there needs to be a way to create the clash of
otherness
and familiar, exotic and the ordinary; as the bindi does on a white
person’s
body, where it allows the bindi to
create an exotic space, and thus a
culture
clash.
Other
wise it can be seen as self-orientalising, ‘wearing
traditional
dress [on the brown body] can be seen as trendy, modern, or
fashionable
precisely because it is a self-orientalising move that often involves a
distanced
gaze or nostalgia for a pre capitalist past’. (Jones & Leshkowich 2003)
Just
as when wealthy middle class women in India started to adopt the peasant,
rural
style of dressing. (Tarlo 1996) It propagates classism, and hierarchy
instead
of creating a new level playing field where dress can be mixed across
cultures,
ethnicities, and individualities.
Conclusion
In
conclusion, I think it’s important to point out that appropriating
different
cultures happens all the time in our globalised fashion industry, yet it
isn’t
always ethical or sensitive. Brown bodies and white bodies should have the
freedom
to dress as they wish, but if we cannot devoid the different meanings of
dress
when worn on the brown body to the white body, then there is still
inequality,
and therefore institutional racism
within our perceived meanings of
dress.
Without
understanding this inequality, and the “double scrutiny” of brown
women’s
bodies, we can never say that it is completely fine for a white body to
appropriate
South Asian ethnic dress or markers without there being some form
of criticism.
There is an unseen violence of
omitting or trying to forget that the
brown
body has been subject to racism, oppression and devalued against the
white
body, before the clothing worn on those bodies was considered “cool” on
the
white body.
British
South Asian women, whatever cultural upbringing they may have had, do
find
it hard to navigate the space between the two binary ideas of what are East
and
West. Often only dressing in Asian clothes when in Asian spaces, and then
standard
western clothing the rest of the time, or only wearing traditional dress.
They
constantly feel like they may be “not Asian enough” for their respective
communities,
or “too Asian” to really be accepted by peers. Dressing in a way
that
goes against the normal depiction of South Asian women’s dress, in South
Asian
spaces can be seen as a rebellious act, and any young woman who does,
faces
some form of criticism of becoming too Western.
If we “queer” South Asian dress by bringing those
concepts of dress into
different
spaces, by making little individual
acts of dressing i.e adding the
converse
to the salwar kameez, jeans and head scarf, creating these hybrids can
send
out mixed messages, but can offer a sense of dual identity for the wearer.
But
bringing South Asian dress into Western spaces, has the attached
connotations
of “otherness” or lesser respectability. The salwar kameez wearing
young
woman who smokes a cigarette in public, this image would illustrate a
culture
clash, but one where the woman would be heavily criticised.
The
full “queering” of South Asian dress or subversion of cultures, I say is when
the
brown body crosses over itself, and
takes on the markers of a western sub –
culture.
I would say this is true subversion, but it points out a racialized version
of
the “goth” or “punk,” and this can seem problematic itself if we are
illustrating
the brown body subverting “alternative” dress, by pointing out race.
But
if we are to relate it to how the white body uses the bindi, it then becomes a
fair
comparision, the bindi is only cool, because the wearer is white and
ultimately
highlights the perverse nature of how
the race of a white body is not
immediately
noted, for wearing a bindi. Whereas the brown body wearing “cool”
dress will be seen as a brown body, not necessarily but definitely
subconsciously,
first. Pointing out the implications of propagating racism in the
act
of cultural and ethnic appropriation.
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