There’s a picture of me at my kindergarten graduation—I’m all of 6 years old, wearing white shorts,
school t-shirt, and white graduation cap set precariously
on top of my hair. I’m also wearing a half set of blue
bangles on each wrist, and a bindi on my forehead.
That was the last time I wore a bindi with a t-shirt
and shorts. The bindi had little meaning for me at the
time beyond adding formality to an important occasion,
and it was the last time I treated my heritage as a
natural extension of my public persona.
I can’t do that anymore, because wearing a bindi
with my name and skin tone sends a message that
I’m an immigrant, that I can’t assimilate, and that
I’m religious. The bindi is a visible symbol that I’m
not American.
| Kourtney Kardashian wears a burka for Instagram, but Muslim schoolchildren in France are barred from wearing the hijab in class. Selena Gomez wears a bindi on stage, but I am forced to carefully wipe off the kumkum on my forehead on the way to school after morning prayers, because when I forget I am asked if I have a disease. |
Of course, all of this only applies because I’m Indian.
If I were anything else, the bindi would be nothing
more than a fashion statement—a quirky sign of my
worldliness for all of my Instagram followers to see.
“Cultural Appropriation” is defined as the adoption
of elements of one culture by members of a different
cultural group; especially of oppressed people’s cultural
elements by members of a dominant culture.
In the case of the bindi, cultural appropriation is
when a white girl (my stand in for all non-Indians)
wears a bindi at a music festival, someone who wasn’t
invited to wear a bindi in the proper context but instead
uses it as a fashion statement.
As an isolated situation, this doesn’t sound particularly
problematic. Sure, it might be a little disquieting,
especially for people who see the bindi in its original
religious context, but the vast majority of Indians use it
for decoration anyway, right?
Right. But while cultural appropriation seems
harmless, in reality it reinforces the idea that there are
bits and pieces of one’s ethnic identity that can be taken
without permission, that can be hacked away and
repurposed for the sake of the white experience. Taking
pieces rather than the whole out of their proper context
delegitimizes their value, turns them into nothing
more than costume jewelry.
One of the most common refrains in a conversation
about appropriation is the idea that a culture is
not a costume, and part of that argument is the idea
that much of cultural appropriation hinges on the idea
that the dominant culture is capable of viewing everyone
else as nothing more complicated than a caricature,
a costume to be purchased and donned and taken
off at leisure.
There are white people who insist that they have
done their homework—that they’ve read up on the
subject, understand the bindi’s place in cultural history.
They say that for them, the bindi is an affirmation
of their spirituality and identity, just as it is for other
South Asians. For them, the issue becomes a little more
complex, because now we have to take into account the
existence of the imperfect world we live in.
I’m not a scholar, but I think that white people,
regardless of their spiritual outlook, should not be
wearing bindis.
And the reason is really, really simple: because
I cannot.
The issue of cultural appropriation isn’t completely about the act, as much as it is with the society it takes place in. In a perfect world, both I and the white girl would be free to wear our bindis with the same lack of judgment from outside parties. We would both understand the history of the bindi, the significance behind wearing one, and if we eventually chose to place a dot in between our brows, we would both be treated as the equal citizens we are.
This is not the case, and so cultural
appropriation becomes another destructive example of privilege. Kylie Jenner is lauded on the internet for her new “edgy” dreadlocks, but Zendaya is mocked by the Fashion Police for hers. Kourtney Kardashian wears a burka for Instagram, but Muslim schoolchildren in France are barred from wearing the hijab in class. Selena Gomez wears a bindi on stage, but I am forced to carefully wipe off the kumkum on my forehead on the way to school after
morning prayers, because when I forget I am asked if I have a disease.
When we wear symbols of our heritage, it is always seen as proof of our “otherness,” a sign of our status as second class citizens who are simply unable to conform to
the American Ideal. It’s seen as a reason to discount our value, a reason to believe that we can’t be as normal
as our peers. Every piece is forced to represent more than what it is or might be—what we deem as fashionable or cultural pride is weaponized against us
through the prejudice of the dominant culture. And
yet when that dominant culture does the same: peels the bindi off our foreheads and places it on theirs, the bindi automatically becomes stripped of the layers of intolerance. The bindi is content to exist on white
skin as an example of everything we might have wanted it to represent on ours.
Perhaps I’m being petty, but it hurts a little to see a white girl defending her choice to wear a bindi as an example of her freedom of expression, when I watch Indian girls brave enough to wear one in class called backward, and assumed to be people of far less worth than they are.
Cultural appropriation is often seen as the quintessential molehill made into a mountain—something small that doesn’t seem to do much harm, at least in comparison to other more visible forms of racism. But racism isn’t just defined by acts of violence. It’s a mindset we indoctrinate, low doses of poison that slowly seep into our veins without us realizing.
Big blaring issues are easily recognizable, and we hope eventually can be defeated. Mindsets, on the other hand, are harder. Stating that issues like cultural appropriation don’t matter in the larger scheme of things, allows the attitudes that breed racism to fester and grow. It cements the idea that culture is something that can be taken rather than given, an us versus them mentality that differentiates between ethnicities. I am not allowed to appreciate my culture unless I don’t belong to it.
In a perfect world, I wouldn’t carefully remove all aspects of my heritage, wouldn’t divorce myself from my culture in a myriad of ways in order to keep my place in society. I wouldn’t deliberately mispronounce Indian names, wouldn’t bite my tongue at the demolition of my religion at the hands of textbooks, wouldn’t remove my bindi in the mornings.
In a perfect world, I would be allowed to be as Indian as I wanted. And in a perfect world, everyone else might be, too.
Maya Murthy is a senior at Monta Vista High School in
Cupertino, California, where she writes for her school newspaper and literary magazine. Source: India Currents.