youarenotdesi:

sushmaloo: I will never forget how embarrassed I was every time my mom came to pick me up from day care because of what the other kids would say about her bindi. This is why we call out those who appropriate bindis :)

This is exactly right. And whilst people argue that the bindi being ‘appropriated’ means exposure and normalisation, the fact of the matter is that it is still not being normalised in its original context. It’s being normalised in terms of everyone except indian people wearing it!! Indian people who wear the bindi are still seen as being backward because their bindis are DIFFERENT. The red dot is joked about as some sort of suicide/self-destruct button.

This is NOT normalisation. THIS is the textbook definition of cultural appropriation i.e. taking away someone else’s cultural property, making it your own and laughing about the actual context it appears in.

(via youarenotdesi)