Friday, March 17, 2017



Earring correctness

Hoop earrings are ethnic.  Who knew?

A resident assistant at Pitzer College sent out an email to the entire school about how upset she was seeing white girls in hoop earrings because it’s culturally offensive to “[t]he black and brown bodies who typically wear hooped earrings.” 

According to an article in The Claremont Independent, the whole thing started when a group of Latino students spray painted “White Girl, take off your hoops!” on a dormitory wall that’s devoted to free speech.

Then, after one white girl said she was confused by the message, one of the spray-painters  – a resident assistant named Alegria Martinez — felt the need to fire off a school-wide email expressing her disgust. 

““[T]he art was created by myself and a few other WOC [women of color] after being tired and annoyed with the reoccuring [sic] theme of white women appropriating styles … that belong to the black and brown folks who created the culture,” Martinez wrote.

 Martinez explained that “[t]he black and brown bodies who typically wear hooped earrings, (and other accessories like winged eyeliner, gold name plate necklaces, etc) are typically viewed as ghetto, and are not taken seriously by others in their daily lives,” and that she sees “winged eyeliner, lined lips, and big hoop earrings … as symbols [and] as an everyday act of resistance, especially here at the Claremont Colleges.” 

(Yep — “winged eyeliner” and “lined lips” are apparently forbidden for white girls, too; I guess I’d better run to the bathroom and wash off my culturally appropriative face!) 

“We wonder, why should white girls be able to take part in this culture (wearing hoop earrings just being one case of it) and be seen as cute/aesthetic/ethnic,” Martinez continued. “White people have actually exploited the culture and made it into fashion.”

SOURCE


6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hoop earrings were common in the Minoan (a Caucasian or White) civilization. If you want to say it was appropriated then it was the women of color who did it.

Bird of Paradise said...

Culteral snowflakes need to start wearing snowflake earings so they can be idenified and male snowflakes should wear hats with a snowflake on it as well

Anonymous said...

If they feel that white girls should not where their cultural fashions then to be consistent the WOC should stop where anything that the white culture has developed such as shoes and anything not made out of animal skins as closes. OH and stop eating anything food that was originally cultivated in Europe.

Use the Name, Luke said...

The college system was developed by white people. If "cultural appropriation" is the standard they want to use, then they need to leave that college. Oh, and don't use any form of motorized transportation. Or anything that uses electricity.

Can you tell that I think the whole "cultural appropriation" idea is idiotic? Everything we know, including language, was learned from one culture or another over the millennia.

Anonymous said...

Some black people need to stop working so hard at being black.

Anonymous said...

The real shame here is that the "WOC" do not realize how ridiculous their statements are. "Cultural appropriation" is a smokescreen to claim grievance and shut down debate.


MDH