Please talk to me about cultural appropriation

[Fraaahnces]

I have been battling alopecia for years and now I am on meds it’s growing back, but very fragile. (Very pleased to report that I look slightly less like Friar Tuck’s 50 y/o twin sister these days!) It’s also driving me batshit crazy because every time I tie it up with a scrunchie or a hairband it tears, or if I use a comb, it slips straight out. Same with headbands. My lovely Chinese neighbour - who has been a spare mother to me and a nanna to my kids (they don’t have one of their own) popped into her place and brought out some beautifully carved sandalwood hair sticks and showed me how to do some nifty little hair buns with them. Voila! It stays!!! (Also doesn’t tangle and it smells delicious!)
Yep… Some twat accused me of cultural appropriation the moment I walked about four houses down the street with these stopping (all three of my) hairs from blowing into my eyes and mouth. And again in the supermarket. And again on the way home.
Am I trying to pass myself off as something I’m not? No. Am I pretending to be more enlightened or spiritually evolved because I now own fancy hair accessories? No.
Were any of them Asian? Yeah… Nah. Were any of the Asian people I wandered past offended? (Would be very surprised if they even noticed, tbh… Probably far too busy actually living to notice what aging women are doing with their crappy hair.)
Also, while we’re on the subject, what is a culturally appropriate solution for someone who is a short, blue-eyed blonde 9th and 10th generation Australian of Scottish, Welsh, Irish, Dhudhuroa, Wiradjuri, Spanish, Portuguese, French, Jamaican, Estonian, Latvian and Russian Jewish extraction to do, exactly?

Me too. Responses like that make people less likely to offer help in all kinds of circumstances. They also chip away at the general civility in a society, just making everyday life a bit less pleasant.

This. I'm a white woman who has had henna, been dressed in a sari, had my hair braided, been taught various cultural dances and phrases belonging to certain religions to which I do not belong. All of these things have been at the instigation and encouragement of friends from the cultures concerned. This is the reality of every day life in a diverse community. There is no way I'd lay claim to anyone else's culture or profit from it in any way, but I'm not going to insult my friends by refusing to share with them because of something that's not an issue for them.

That poor lady re: sweater. Sounds like she was trying to be helpful,I'd want to know something like that, skirt tucked in to my bloomers etc.

Really pleased that your condition is getting better OP 💐Long may it continue!

OP, I’m sorry you encountered such rude and stupid people. Wear the hair accessories your lovely Chinese friend gave you with pride!

I'm partly Chinese and I think it's nice that you are wearing Chinese hair sticks. I haven't met Chinese people who think cultural appropriation is a problem. I think it's a compliment.

Some people need to get a life and stop being so sanctimonious. You did nothing wrong. They, on the other hand, waded in with no knowledge of the backstory

Your neighbour sounds kind. Sharing culture is a wonderful thing, it is a shame cries of cultural appropriation can put people off enjoying things from other cultures. It's a very grey subject because where do you draw the line?

Yes, agreed.

I think there are some things that are just obviously inappropriate - for example wearing a sombrero as part of a "Mexican" costume (this is an example of cultural appropriation given by Google).

But I don't really understand how holding up your hair with a couple of sticks - especially when your neighbour kindly showed you how - is an issue at all.

Many people enjoy sharing their culture. For example I know some Indian people who say that they like to see the saree worn by anyone who would like to wear it (as long as it's worn with respect). Which made me very happy because they are such beautiful, colourful garments.

I’m on the side of sweater wearing woman.
She is probably sick to the back teeth of comments on her appearance making her feel self conscious and humiliated. Come on, try and remember how it makes you feel when someone tells you something is wrong with your clothes. It’s not a good feeling. If someone says ‘your sweater is on wrong’ what that implies is that it MATTERS that your sweater is on wrong, when maybe in order to get on with life you are having to go out in a less than perfectly groomed state and try and forget about it.

I was in a school meeting last week and I noticed one of the teachers had her jeans zip undone at the front where the jeans were a bit too small. Should I have told her? I don’t think it would have made her more comfortable or improved the meeting for her- far better to pretend not to have noticed!

Several different people stopped you to accuse you of thus in a few hours?

Sounds like cultural appreciation to me. Perhaps tell that to the next person who thinks they have the right to comment.

Absolutely. The poor woman who was brave enough to try to be helpful must have been mortified. She wasn't mocking or criticising.

They didn't though did they? You just want to start a debate. Nobody in real life cares

which would be fair enough if the woman doing the tapping was making fun of the inside-out sweater wearer in any way but she wasn't, she was trying to be helpful. If it was something the woman couldn't change about her appearance (scar, loss of hair), also fair enough. But in this case 99% of people would want to know that their sweater was inside out so they could change it. Also her justification doesn't even make any sense - if she had sufficient hand-eye coordination to be able to dress herself surely that's much harder than turning the top the right way around before you put it on?

I agree there is never any need to comment negatively about someone's appearance but that wasn't a negative comment or intended to insult or upset in any way.

OP this is the one thing I love about britain, in most places we can barely rouse ourselves to make eye contact and say good morning when we walk past a stranger, let alone make comments about cultural appropriation! How utterly weird for 3 people to a) think that and b) go to the effort of commenting. Apart from anything else you can't tell someone's heritage just by looking at them. Lots of people have 1 black/asian parent and look completely white, and vice versa.

I think cultural appropriation is a nuanced thing and IMO it's where ethnically white people co-opt something from an ethnic minority group as fancy dress or wear something that had historically resulted in discrimination against that group,

For example:

A white person wearing a hairstyle traditional worn by Black people (braids/afros) as Black people are sometimes discriminated against by being seen as less professional for wearing their hair this way or banned from school.

Wearing First Nation headdresses as fancy dress, which have sacred/religious meaning for the tribes concerned.

Ignore the comments OP, I don't think staying your hair in this way is cultural appropriation.

(EDITED FOR TYPOS)

I don't know what the tapping woman was trying to do, she said it really loudly which I think is why the disabled woman found it embarrassing / offensive and replied the way she did.

Most people only have a vague understanding of definition of cultural appropriation, and it's mostly based on their own individual understanding, and most likely way too much social media. There is a lot of white cringe blowback at the moment, and this can result in misguided virtue signalling as overcompensation.

Unfortunately, your neighbours kind gesture and really helpful solution, cannot be parsed by your random passer-by, and of course you're not going give a stranger an explanation they are not entitled to. You'll probably end up trying find something else that does the same job, but less meaningful to you.

Three occasions of people actually stopping to comment I'd quite a lot, and I'm a bit surprised. Let's face it there are people out in PJ's in shopping centres or barefoot, and nobody would comment. They might judge internally, but very rarely do people comment to someone's face. What did they actually have the nerve to say say to you?

If you spent your life having people “helping” in this unwanted way over and over again every day you would soon be utterly sick of it and consider this lady a legend.
It is definitely a situation where unless you have lived the life of a disabled person you really can’t understand how wearing and intrusive “being kind” can be at times.

for me, cultural appropriation is using items/mannerisms from other cultures in an intentionally disrespectful way. everything else is totally fine.

My culture is appropriated all the time.

It's also appreciated in a lot of ways like you have done as well.

There are a lot of, shall we say, enthusiastic, people who take offence on my behalf when things similar to this happen, but they don't speak for me.

For me appropriation is all about the intent behind it. Your intent was to do your hair, nothing more, nothing less.

I'm so glad you've found a solution that works for you op 💐

I'm of Chinese heritage and this isn't cultural appropriation. It's lovely that your friend gave you the hair sticks and that they've been a good solution for you.
Imo cultural appropriation would be if you were dressed up in traditional chinese clothes trying to look cool and 'ethnic' with no connection to the culture.

I do think cultural appropriation is a thing but I don't think what you are doing is it. I think the 'rules' are quite nuanced but if say it's appropriation when you are making money from something from another culture in particular if they struggle to do that and your privlidge helps with it. Eg selling African print home wear in a fancy shop in Notting Hill asa white person.

Or having style or fashion which belongs to another culture which you pass off as your own or has been marginalised but you can get away with it because of your social position.

Eg lots of black hairstyles were thought of as unacceptable in the past or looked down on. So wearing them as a white person is appropriation.

Some twat accused me of cultural appropriation the moment I walked about four houses down the street with these stopping (all three of my) hairs from blowing into my eyes and mouth. And again in the supermarket. And again on the way home.

So three different people came up to you and told you that you were guilty of "cultural approrpriation" during one short outing? That sounds unlikely. Unless the hairsticks were particularly large and ostentatious I'm surprised three people even noticed let alone commented.

How bizarre. I have very fine hair which never stays in place, and I used to use wooden sticks at times for a bun. Sometimes even just a pencil. I don't see how that is possibly cultural appropriation.

I can't speak for anyone else but as a Chinese woman it wouldn't even register to me as something remotely offensive. I'm sure you look lovely with them in your hair, so don't let other people put you off.