Out of all of my pet peeves Cultural Appropriation is definitely one of the biggest, and BOY has 2014 been the year of celebrity cultural appropriation. I think it's totally disgusting to detatch a culture from its meaning and use it as an Instagram caption to boost their trendiness. Some people like to argue that they culturally appropriate a certain culture because they "respect it" or "love it so much" but there's a huge difference between CULTURAL APPROPRIATION VS CULTURAL APPRECIATION. *If you are not a part of the culture then don't steal from it. It's totally fine if you wanna write about how much you love it or draw pictures of people wearing these cultural items like bindis but don't be that person to cross the line and don a bindi in your Instagram photo. Let me get to the celebrities...
First off ladies and gentleman, we have *drumroll* KATTYY PERRRYYY
She's recently been getting some heavy backlash for her repeated cultural appropriation and I can completely understand why. If Katy didn't appropriate other cultures would she even have a career? Because that seems like what it's been built off of. All she's accomplishing is contributing to racial stereotypes that need to be dropped.
Next up is SELENA GOMEZ:
We've got another repeat offender here. She's been doing this for quite a while but she finally got called out when she performed her song "Come and Get it" at the MTV movie awards. FOR SOME REASON she thought it would be totally okay and non-controversial to wear a bindi and an indian themed outfit. **HEAVY SIGHING**
Last but definitely not least, MILEY CYRUS:
Dear Miley Cyrus, cultural insensitivity isn't cute! Using black female dancers as props is not cute! Taking on a culture because you're privileged enough not to face the racist negatives that go along with it IS NOT CUTE! All she's doing is putting a bunch of stereotypes of lower classes of minorities together so she can be "edgy" or "gangsta". I would also like to know how Miley got away with doing something that black women have been doing for years (twerking) and now all of a sudden there are no more negative connotations that go along with it because she's a rich white girl. BUT as soon as a black girl is caught twerking she's "ho" or "slut". That's not right. The other day I found this great slam poem on Youtube about twerking and I think you should all watch it and educate yourselves:
So earlier this year I went on a class trip to Italy which was breathtaking and everything I expected it to be and more. Before I actually left for the trip I dreamed about it being like the Lizzie Mcguire movie and that I would meet my Italian look alike, a hot Italian boy named Paolo and then go on to sing at a huge concert and call Paolo out on his shit in front of everybody. Long story short, none of that ever happened but my trip was pretty rad. We did things like go to the Trevi fountain (Iconic "making a wish scene" in Lizzie Mcguire), eat about 3000 pounds of gelato every day, and we had about 3 hours of free time to roam around each day by ourselves which was very cool. There were some obnoxious people on the trip but I tried my hardest not to let them ruin it for me. Also, the Italian boys were A LOT less charming then I had imagined... At one point were at a rest stop and when we passed a group of them they had the audacity to oink at us, I was sooo close to kicking some Italian ass haha. Whatever, our tour guide was an angel who spoke like 10 different languages and overall the trip was worth the amount of money my family shelled out for it. I took lots of pictures on my camera and put them on my Flickr so you can see them here: https://www.flickr.com/photos/126484983@N06/sets/72157645577875690/
Word of advive: If your school offers you an opportunity to take a trip like this, TAKE IT. You won't regret it ;)
HI HEY HELLO. Welcome to my blog. I had another one a while ago but I didn't keep up with it and it became a failed endeavor. This blog will just basically be me rambling on about the things I like or feel like should be talked about (Feminism, music, movies, Matthew Gray Gubler, etc...) This is just a very short introduction post but you can go to my About Me page to learn a lil more about the person running this. Now you should enjoy this hilarious and very awkwardly choreographed video as a final WELCOME.
