our words cut & thrust

mycultureisnotatrend:

chelseacaustic:

Please buy me this. Please.

It’s amazing how inwardly focused most of the posts regarding headdresses and war bonnets around here seem to be. As I was scrolling through the “headdress” tag, a pattern became all too evident. This trend is about owning the item. Consumption. It’s about selfishness. It represents the antithesis to everything about the natives who sacrifice and work for to earn the real thing.

So many posts are tagged with “WANT”  ” Give it to meeeee”   and “She’s soooo gorgeous with that hat, I wish I could have one!”

All of this deception about “honoring” and “respecting” a culture is nothing more than smoke and mirrors. I don’t need your lies. I don’t need to be your “muse,” your “inspiration.”

At least be honest about it.

That there, is the bottom line. The reason I get so much flack for this blog ( I swim around in hate mail like scrooge McDuck in money), is that it hits close to home. People are selfish. They want to build a fantasy world where that embodies everything in these desaturated and wistful pictures. But at the center of that world is them. Asking them to divorce that image, cuts to the core of their being, forcing them to re-analyze their own self perception: “But I’m not a racist,”  “But I don’t benefit from white privilege,”  “But it’s just fashion.”

If you find yourself becoming defensive after reading this blog, take a moment to really analyze your motivations. I’ll appeal to your shaken sense of self. Do you really want to be on the wrong side of this argument? How will this position last as this trend follows the course of history? Will you be proud to have taken part?