My Culture Is Not A Costume

Saris, Bindis, And Parodies Of The Hindu Goddess Durga – Where Is The Line Between Cultural Appreciation And Cultural Appropriation? As Fashion And Pop Culture Continue To Take Inspiration From Indian Culture, We Look At The Social And Cultural Ramifications This Can Have On South Indian Women

- K Praveena

As a young girl, I was always interested in fashion. But flipping through glossy magazines in the early aughts and seeing the deluge of ‘Pan-Asian’ models, almost always with fair-skin, just reinforced one thing to me: That I was not meant to be a part of this world. Perhaps I should not have been surprised. Going to school was an emotionally traumatising chore: As a dark-skinned South Indian girl, I was constantly bullied for my skin tone and for wearing a black bindi, a Hindu religious symbol that my mother used to put on my forehead as a form of protection from the evil eye.

I vividly recall my classmates pointing at their foreheads and making rude gestures, laughing, passing racially charged comments; eventually, I would remove my bindi on the way to school, just to avoid the taunts. But in 2013, I saw something that infuriated me: At that year’s MTV Music Awards, Selena Gomez wore a red bindi, along with an ‘Indian-inspired’ outfit to perform a song that had no relation whatsoever to Indian culture. It made me think: Why did I – an actual South Indian woman – have to conceal a sentimental part of my culture just to stop being mocked, while a white celebrity could flaunt it as a fashion choice?

THE WHITE GIRL AND THE BINDI