Me and my camera in my home town, my capital city, my london
There was a news story that came up in the feed recently about a campaign in U.S to get white girls to stop wearing hoop earrings on the grounds that it was cultural appropriation and therefore shouldn’t be allowed. There seem to be a relentless amount of cases of spurious charges of cultural appropriation these days that are really nothing short of absolute bollocks. They’re hoop fucking earrings for fucks sake. Really? Shouldn’t you be finding something actually worth aggrieving over rather than this nonsense? Its not like they’re isn’t enough evil shit happening around the world to choose from. There’s tons. Why not focus on any of those instead of trying really hard looking for a reason to be outraged on behalf of whatever community or culture you think has been slighted. Throughout history there have been many acts of negative cultural appropriation that have caused certain cultures to be ransacked for the profit and power of others but this is not one of them. Not even close. If a white girl wears hoop earrings no-one suffers, unless she mebbe accidentally gets one caught in a door or something and it rips her ear out.
The human race evolved and learned to interact and integrate by sharing stuff. Fashion, food, music, knowledge. This is what brings us together not divides us. If everyone is too shit scared to borrow something that didn’t originate from the society they came from its going to make for a pretty dull existence. We are all part of the same fucking species. You should be able to do what you like as long as no-one is getting hurt or abused. No-one has ownership on anything. There would be nothing but boiled cabbage and boiled fucking ham to eat in this country if we hadn’t “appropriated” cuisines from around the world. Is our past to be our future? And if so, why is this isolationist approach to living being championed by both ends of the political spectrum as a way forwards when it is clearly a backwards trajectory?
(this is a minor digression from this week’s theme. I saw the hoop earrings in the shot and it reminded me of the above ridiculousness and felt the need to vent. (#rantaclockthrowback to anyone who remembers)