by Isabella Azcorra.
In a very diverse world we live in today, many people such as myself would love to share the culture and heritage we come from.
However, there is a line between appreciating one’s culture and appropriating it. To practice cultural appreciation means to explore and actually desire to learn more about a culture; honoring its traditions and beliefs. Sadly, many people especially shown online decide to cultural appropriate; when they adopt certain customs, practices and sometimes even beliefs of a culture and disrespecting it.
It’s hard to identify when somebody appreciates a culture or is appropriating it. Here are some huge examples of this and why it is appreciation or appropriation.
1. Miley Cyrus
A few years back, Miley Cyrus definitely appeared to be cherry picking a lot of aspects from black culture; wearing dreadlocks, stealing lyrics from reggae music, putting more hip hop into her music, and more.
She only used these to revive a dying career and was called out for cultural appropriation by many and for good reason.
2. Kylie Jenner
Kylie Jenner and some of her sisters have been called out for cultural appropriating braids multiple times. She has never given credit to black women for the hair she always appropriates. Not only this but many people believe she has used cosmetic surgery to blackfish, an example of this is when she went from paper thin lips to bigger lips which appeared to be those of black women.
She is one of the easiest examples to look to when somebody is doing cultural appropriation.
3. Adele
A few months ago, Adele posted this image on her instagram which includes her wearing Bantu knots for a festival. Many users out of the over five million people who liked her post were conflicted as to if she was appropriating the culture or simply paying respect to it.
However, the reason it isn’t considered cultural appropriation is because it was in a festival that celebrates Jamaican culture and the festival took place in the city she grew up in. She didn’t have any ill intentions that shown compared to other women who frequently take things from other cultures such as Katy Perry and Kim Kardashian.
It’s important to ask and acknowledge if somebody simply wants to appreciate another culture or is exploiting it. You need to realize if they have good intentions or not, are profiting off of it, realize the origin, etc.
Keeping people accountable for their actions is important but throwing around the term cultural appropriation is a bad idea when you don’t look at the context.
Context is always the key.