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“Another year, another Coachella, another trend mired in cultural appropriation. It’s the true circle of life. You can almost watch the fixed gears of hipster logic grind: Now that Native American headdresses are offensive, we need to snatch some cool novelty from another culture. And so it came to be that bindis were a hit at Coachella.
Selena Gomez was wearing one. The Jenner-Kardashians sported them. Vanessa Hudgens, Duchess of Coachella herself, was wearing one.
Okay, let’s just nip this one right in the bud right now.
The bindi is not your music festival fashion accessory. It’s not something to be integrated into a tribal fringe mosaic of a get-up. Taking a symbol from a culture that is thousands of years old and divorcing it from its meaning — or even embracing its meaning for the express purpose of looking cool (bro, do you even chataranga?) — does not lend you any cred — street, worldly, or otherwise. And wearing a bindi to Coachella certainly is not a genuine celebration of Hindu culture, so please don’t even start with that.
For those who are overcome with déjà vu, yes, we have already talked about this. Selena Gomez already came under fire when Hindu activists told her what was up regarding her Bollywood-inspired MTV Movie Awards performance. But I guess at Coachella, cultural awareness goes out the window and everyone’s a free bird, pecking at the decontextualized chops of other cultures.
The whole point of appropriation is to neutralize fragments of cultures and level them so they can easily be assimilated. (Because apparently that’s what equality means now: everybody gets a patch on the denim crop vest!) And in a way, the bindi has already traveled across borders as a sort of export, incorporated into trends across South and Southeast Asia. In modern times and in emigrant populations, its spiritual meaning has already been deemphasized—today some merely consider it another traditional but fashionable accessory to wear with a sari.”
– Jezebel, Take That Dot Off Your Forehead and Quit Trying to Make Bindis Happen!
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Download the 18″x24″ poster (.pdf), Indian Country 52 #15 – Bindi (Coachella).
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Indian Country 52
Indian Country 52 is a weekly project by David Bernie that uses the medium of posters that promote issues and stories in Indian Country.
Creative Commons License
This work by David Bernie is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. You may download, share, and post the images under the condition that the works are attributed to the artist.
