by: Liz O'Donnell
According to The Daily
Dot cultural appropriation is the “practice in which people use a culture
that’s not their own as a costume or a prop”. It is also a form of racism.
Modern examples range from blackface fraternity parties, to non-Indian women
wearing Henna tattoos, to Katy Perry’s Geisha get up with slanted eye makeup at
the AMA in 2013.
It is not only harmful in
that it turns cultures into cartoons, as well as promoting a double standard
that styles look safer when worn by a white American, it also gives other
cultures permission to supposedly represent another culture, particularly ones
that have been exploited and underrepresented.
So where does Gwen
Stefani tie into all of this? Well, remember the “Harajuku Girls”?
From No Doubt, to
“Hollaback Girl”, to a career break, then to “Spark the Fire”, Gwen Stefani
does not cease to be a topic of discussion. However her popular reputation does
not always shine bright with catchy songs. Gwen Stefani is also famous, or
rather infamous, for her cultural appropriation and exploitation of the
Harajuku culture and women.
They were Gwen Stefani’s
backup dancers since 2004. What made them worthy of debate and discussion was
that they were just “The Harajuku Girls”, or at least Stefani’s representation
of Harajuku women. According to TIME, the girls became Gwen’s “posse” and were
“reportedly contractually obligated to only speak Japanese in public” when
allowed to speak, and were renamed “as if pets” Love, Angel, Music, and Baby.
Stefani even refers to this sort of purchase in her 2005 hit “If I were a Rich
Girl”: “I'd get me four Harajuku girls to/Inspire me and they'd come to my
rescue/ I'd dress them wicked, I'd give them names/ Love, Angel, Music, Baby/
Hurry up and come and save me”.
Both critics and
audiences alike found themselves shaking their heads at Stefani’ stereotyping
and objectification. For some, the highlight of the exploitation was Stefani’s
song, from her 2005 tour, “Harajuku Girl”, more specifically her AOL Sessions
video. For a song that was meant to compliment and praise the Harajuku culture,
the video begins with Gwen Stefani sitting upon a throne, talking to the viewer
directly, as the Harajuku Girls sit beneath her, on their knees, looking down
and away from the camera. It got worse as the dance began with the Harajuku
Girls kneeling down and bowing to Gwen Stefani, who stood proudly above them.
The rest of the video involved the Harajuku girls blankly dancing around in
bleak grey uniforms behind a strutting and sexy Gwen Stefani.
One can see where the
problem lies in this situation. Rather than letting Harajuku participants speak
of their culture, letting Harajuku performers perform their own music, or
Stefani even partnering up with Japanese stars to highlight both Japanese and
American talent and music, Gwen Stefani takes it upon herself to represent a
culture that she is not a part of. And she is still doing this today.
According to the Daily
Dot, Gwen Stefani created her own Harajuku line for Target in 2012. Some like
Madeliene Davies from Jezebel say this isn’t an attempt to highlight Harajuku,
as it was only Stefani behind the operation: “by [collaborating] with Japanese
musicians and artists and [she could have created] a cool hybrid thing where
everyone had input and equal billing.” Davies says, “What she did instead was
repurpose a highly stylized element of Japanese culture, take away context, and
place herself in front of the whole thing as a leader and creator.”
One could try to excuse
her history with the fact that this was eleven years ago, and today we are
slightly more aware of the harms of cultural appropriation, until one sees her
music video for “Looking Hot” where she is wearing a sexualized and
stereotypical Native American headdress. Though, according to TIME, she did
apologize for the offensive video, she reveals to TIME in another interview
that she does not regret the Harajuku girls at all. “There’s always going to be
two sides to everything. For me, everything that I did with the Harajuku Girls
was just a pure compliment and being a fan. You can’t be a fan of somebody
else? Or another culture? Of course you can. Of course you can celebrate other
cultures. That’s what Japanese culture and American culture have done” the star
says in defense, “You can look at it from a negative point of view if you want
to, but get off my cloud.”
She evens tries to show
that this was a great experience for the girls, as one of them, Stefani doesn’t
name which, got to learn about her culture, as the young dancer was actually
not born from Japan herself: “One girl was a Japanese girl that grew up in
L.A., and she got to hang around with three different Japanese girls that were
from different places in Japan and had different backgrounds. They became best
friends, and she got to go to Japan and see her heritage and see how we are all
the same.”
But Gwen Stefani does not
understand the difference between being a fan and exploiting what she
presumably loves. If she were to promote this culture in a positive way, she
would have let the Harajuka Girls speak in public, at least in their chosen
language, and let them dance alongside her, not behind her. She, preferably the
girls, could have talked about the history of Harajuku, and how, according to
Travel Channel, it derived from postwar Allied Japan occupation. When shops
opened to supply American troops, young Japanese children and teenagers would
go in and see the merchandise. They could have mentioned that the term Harajuku
derived from the Japanese designers who traveled to these areas to sell and
create under their title of “the Harajuku tribe”. They also could have
introduced the different styles of Harajuku, as listed by L’etage, like Lolita,
Sweet Lolita, Gothic Lolita, Guro Lolita, Country Lolita, Kuro and Shiro
Lolita, Kawaii, Cosplay, which is very popular in America, Visual Kei, and
possibly some more. They had eleven years to do what these two articles did,
but they did not take any responsibility. Instead Gwen used Harajuku, rather
than teach it to the world.
Whether you are a fan of
the artist in question or not, deeply problematic portrayals like this cannot
be ignored. This kind of exploitation prevents a great chance to show actual
representation of another culture particularly when it is so underrepresented,
and Gwen Stefani should not be glamourized for destroying and exploiting such
an opportunity for the Harajuku community. That is just, as Stefani would say, bananas.
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