Insensitive Knick-Knack Week

Your Tucson coverage continues. It's a safe bet that any of the well-shot dramatic landscape photos were taken by one of two astrophysicists. Close-ups of poodles, cacti, these I can take some credit for.

In honor of Insensitive Knick-Knack Week, I will return to the earrings-and-racial-insensitivity topic. Because I sure do like them, I hope it's not somehow offensive for me to go around wearing these. (Cheapness Studies note: at the store where I got them in Tucson, they went for about $20 less than indicated here.)

For the link-averse, they are a pair of lab-created (that is, faux) white-opal drop earrings, set in silver not-quite-filigree, but kind of like that. They are this fabulous mix of space-age, iridescent, and geometric, yet, even with all that going on, non-clunky. They are also made-in-the-USA-by-Native-Americans, which is either Good or Bad for the community in question - good because it's supporting them economically, bad because it's the appropriation (see more posts than I could possibly link to here) of their styles by pale outsiders. Styles that come from peoples displaced so that my peoples could, in turn, displace on over from whichever pogroms. (Banality of the day: the history of oppression is complicated.)

While this particular pair of earrings does not look (to me, at least) distinctly Southwestern or Native-artisan enough to be identifiable as such, if they did, they'd be on-trend. Various forms of "cowboys-and-Indians"-inspired fashions have been so-very-now for a while. Thus Tavi's "Twin Peaks" motif, thus all the designer-collab Pendleton... and thus the (mildly NSFW) "Navajo panties" scandal, wherein trendy chain stores sell undergarments and less racy attire as well, using the Navajo name, without, needless to say, Navajo approval. My earrings are evidently genuine Navajo-produced. Less problematic than a "Navajo" thong made in China, but not entirely OK.

But it's iffy when it is and isn't OK to take fashion inspiration from groups other than your own. I don't want to usurp anyone else's traditional dress, but on a certain level, everything is appropriation. Even dressing generically "American." If I wear pearl studs, and not for a need-to-look conservative occasion, I feel a bit silly, because my family wouldn't have been, still wouldn't be, accepted in a Lilly Pulitzer world. (And it would sure piss off Simon Doonan.) Anything preppy will come across as social-climbing, in a Ralph Lauren-né-Lifshitz kind of way. And it's similar with "heritage" fashions. And of course, any hip-hop-inspired anything, on someone as pale as I am, presents obvious awkwardness.

But problems arise if I dress "Jewish." I have the ethnicity for Hasidic garb, but not the piety. Dressing "Israeli," when I've only ever lived in New York, Chicago, Paris, and Princeton, and have not served in the IDF, doesn't sit right. And even if I went for the look derogatorily labelled as "JAP," this would not be authentic, because that's more of a suburbs-of-NY aesthetic, and is not something I actually grew up with. I am not from Ugg-North Face-French manicure country, not that there's anything wrong with that. The only authentic option is for me to wear a lot of black, or to wear whatever the street-fashion blogs dictate, because that's "very New York."

The answer, however, might be less complicated than I'm making it out to be. If you're conceiving of your personal style, it's best to do so in terms that have nothing to do with ethnicity, because head-to-toe of any culture or subculture's look, even your own, will, at best, look costumey. There's no not borrowing. Just stay away from symbols that you know evoke specific racist histories, and, if alerted to the fact that something you're wearing does, send it to the landfill, or better yet, donate it to the relevant museum with exhibits on intolerance of the group in question.