Gwen Stefani defends herself against longtime cultural appropriation claims

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26 minutes ago, enissa11 said:

but in the clip she literally says she wears them because she thinks "it looks cool", and rather than tony's mon giving them to her and encouraging to wear them, she says she "inspired" her to wear them. I see your point, but i think you're putting it in a rosy kind of way.

I’m taking this from a different interview she did, I think for Vogue. She talks about how his mom would dress up for these parties and how beautiful she looked, and after Gwen commented, she gave her some to wear. 

This doesn’t take away from the fact that a lot of Indian American women were made fun of for wearing them and that it took a white woman to make them deemed acceptable. I’m just explaining what Gwen herself has said on other occasions about how she started wearing them. 

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52 minutes ago, enissa11 said:

but in the clip she literally says she wears them because she thinks "it looks cool", and rather than tony's mon giving them to her and encouraging to wear them, she says she "inspired" her to wear them. I see your point, but i think you're putting it in a rosy kind of way.

FYI, this is one of the videos where she talks about it, but there are others. The part about the bindi starts around 45 seconds in: 

That said, I'm not sure she fully understands the cultural significance of the bindi. There's another interview where she mentions Tony's mom encouraging her to wear it, but I can't remember where I read or saw that one or I would cite it. 

 

[Runway 27,876]

we love you queen. She served so hard during The Sweet Escape era. Gwen, Nelly Furtado and Fergie made my MTV years gold

[enissa11 2,984]

27 minutes ago, Franch Toast said:

I'm not sure she fully understands the cultural significance of the bindi.

oh she clearly doesn't, in the end even in this video she says she wore them just because she thought it look beautiful, rather than from a place of honoring the culture and understand what it meant

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Just now, enissa11 said:

oh she clearly doesn't, in the end even in this video she says she wore them just because she thought it look beautiful, rather than from a place of honoring the culture and understand what it meant

Yes. I'm not sure she knows the significance beyond her finding them pretty, or if she does know the meaning behind them, she's not articulating them in these interviews. I'm not saying it's not problematic for her to wear one, I was just pointing out that it originated from her connection to Tony and wasn't random. 

She isn't the worldliest person, even now. There's a video of her and Tony being interviewed in a cab in Germany in 2000, and she talks about how she didn't grow up knowing much about the world (4:50 in the video below):

 

[Clarence 1,444]

yall bored

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She’s so pleasant. She legit appreciates cultures. Take it as you want, but she never mocked any culture. And if she wore something cultural, it was out of love and loving the beauty behind it.

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I found this thread quite illuminating about the Harajuku Girls:

I agree with his Tweet (later in the thread) that at the very least, she could've spoken out against the anti-Asian hate crimes happening the past few months. Like someone else on this thread said, she is plucking the good parts of the culture without really engaging with it or dealing with the realities of it. The realities of being an East Asian in America right now are the threat of verbal slurs, violence, or murder. 

Though I will say is that the four women––Maya Chino, Jennifer Kita, Rino Nakasone, and Mayuko Kitayama––have all spoken extremely highly of her, as I mentioned earlier in this thread. Also, she has put her money where her mouth is in some ways: She raised a bunch of money for Japan after the 2011 tsunami, so it's not like she doesn't actually care about the people there.