Frustrating

The sheer amount of clothing stores/companies that appropriate Indigenous culture, customs, and values. While everything is a sort of cultural appropriation of something else, and nothing is really original, I think we can do better. Forever 21 and Urban Outfitters seem to be most guilty of this. This is almost worse (if ranking what is better or worse in this situation was useful) than turning Indigenous folks into mascots or costumes, because this is becoming engrained into the cultural imagination as o.k. Of course mascots and costumes are entwined in the perpetuation of stereotypes as normative and appropriate, but everyday-wares? It is not a tribute or honoring, it is identity/culture tourism and not everyone has the same freedom and mobility to move about these cultural identities and locations, as some more privileged folks do. Everything has embedded ideologies and messages, and we have to be self-reflexive shoppers. What does it mean to buy a knock-off of someone’s religious and spiritual garb and wear it to the bar. Seems disrespectful and tasteless to me; But hey, who am I?