The fans response:

What is cultural appropriation?

This is the last post I’m making about the whole “Adore and the bindi” thing.

I have received so much hate yesterday that I had to turn off my inbox, but also support ( which i’m thankful for) and a LOT of questions. So here’s a small explanation….

I’ve noticed that literally everyone who’s against my original post has no idea what cultural appropriation is. They’re comparing putting on a bindi for the sake of looking more “hippie” to eating tacos and wearing jeans.

My god.

Cultural appropriation is when an inherently dominant and colonial culture ( aka white culture) takes advantage of and exploits an inherently oppressed culture by cheaply copying it, westernising it, and slowly removing any authority that the natives naturally have on their own cultural and religious items. And then the exploitation slowly becomes global and continues to happen generation after generation , resulting in someone like Adore doing what she did without realising the impact.

Of course she had to tweet an apology after the reaction here on tumblr and reddit. I’m very grateful that I was not the only one who thought what she did was not cool. But come on, thinking something sacred from another religion and culture is “beautiful” or even adapting its significance for “pseudo-spirituality” or in order to look different and “exotic” doesn’t allow you to actually wear it, but I guess I shouldn’t expect everyone to educate themselves on the matter. And being half Mexican and somewhat Native American doesn’t give you the right either. Nobody should participate in appropriating any oppressed culture in this day and age. Really. We should all open our eyes to the impact colonialism has had on third world countries ( and also native Americans and native Australians.) That’s the thing here. It’s not “cultural exchange”. And it’s not “cultural appreciation”. Get it right, folks.

(I do appreciate the apology though and I think she should have said that in the first place instead of getting angry and defensive) And also don’t ask me why I haven’t talked about other queens doing problematic things, because I’m not a fan of every drag queen out there. I speak about the ones I’m familiar with.

That’s all, people.

The case is closed.