Starcasm.net – TLC Promo Photos
Earlier, Vincent Schilling had a column up at ICTMN about Native headdress showing up on a reality show. A short while later, Vincent Schilling was able to talk with the designer about this, um, travesty. There’s nothing quite so rabidly defensive as a white person busy appropriating another peoples’ culture and traditions, all while getting it spectacularly fucking wrong in every possible respect.
Before we get to the spectacular fucking up, a word about traditional Cherokee clothing. (The groom in the show claims Cherokee ancestry. If that’s so, I’d think he’d want Cherokee clothing, but I guess “Native American” will do.) Cherokee people were never big on feathers, and they certainly never had anything even close to Plains Indians’ headdresses. There were a few various ways that men chose to style their hair and decorations, but when a headdress was worn, it was in the style of a turban, as in the painting of Sequoyah.
You can read up on traditional Cherokee dress here, here, and here. On to the monumental ignorance and stupidity.
Gypsy dress designer Sondra Celli created a Cherokee-themed dress and a Native American-influenced headdress for Hunter and Dalton Smith on the reality series My Big Fat American Gypsy Wedding.
In an exclusive interview with ICTMN, Celli said that the ‘Native-inspired’ headdress was made by her design team, and the headdress for the groom — who claims Native ancestry — was purchased from a Native American company over the internet.
Celli told ICTMN because the groom was Native American, she did not alter any of the groom’s outfit and that he approved of the bride’s outfit.
“Because he is Native American we made sure we bought a true Native American headpiece made by Native Americans. We bought him a true Native American shirt made by Native Americans. I made sure it came from an authentic Native American company.”
*Resists impulse to pound head into wall* If there is one thing to get into your skull if you are not an indigenous person, it’s this: there is no such fucking thing as “Native American” anything. Repeat over and over until you get it. Indigenous peoples (many of whom are not American) can not be conveniently dumped into a pail of whitewash so we come out with every nation believing the same, having the same traditions, the same clothing, the same housing, and so forth. We are all different. There just isn’t enough eyeroll in the universe for this shit.
What about the bride’s wedding outfit?
She is a gypsy. Hunter is a cowgirl and would not give up her boots. I told her, ‘I am going to Sondra Celli you up’ and I made her a Native American-inspired dress … and [the groom] was real cool with her being her. I am very respectful of the fact he is Native American. This is what they told me — please understand that I am just the designer.
I made sure we did not touch his headpiece and it stayed exactly the way we bought it. The shirt is exactly the way we bought it. We ordered it on the Internet from a Native American company.
I made her headpiece, and the girl who works for me studies Native Americans. She put all of those feathers on. Like we say on television, it is native-inspired. We do not say this is a Native American costume. This is a Sondra Celli gypsy rhinestone costume that is inspired by Native Americans.
Emphasis mine. I’m just going to wander off and scream for a moment.
What is your response to Native people that say this is appropriating Native culture?
I think the fact that their clothing is so beautiful and the detail is so beautiful, they should be accepting of the fact that we borrowed from their clothing. I said “inspired” through the whole show. I never said it was authentic Native American clothing, not once.
Um…Yes, you did say that. You wouldn’t shut up about all the authentic “Native American” clothes. Right up there ^.
I don’t find a problem with putting something inspired from the beauty of Native American clothes on someone who is not Native American. They should be honored that we think their clothing is so beautiful, that we took some of the colors from it.
Honoured. Right. Oh, all you did was borrow colours! Well, that makes it okay.
This is a TV show, so you have to take it for what it is. I do not believe this dishonors people. I would never do that.
That’s convenient. You don’t believe this dishonours anyone, so of course, it doesn’t. White magic.
I’ve taken the idea of kimonos from Japan and they are rhinestoned. I never say they are Japanese kimonos. I say they are inspired.
Every designer from all over the world has taken ideas from Native Americans.
Oddly enough, we notice things like that.
The PBS Museum just had an exhibit, Native American designers that have come into the modern world made Native American inspired clothing with plastic metal who are getting ideas in a way from our world and made really cool clothes with beading. I was blown away.
I think they were inspired by what we do in the modern [world].
Fuuuuuck me. I really do have to scream now. Yeah, just a few of us Indians are crossing the bridge into the modern white world, where of course, we’re stealing ideas from white modernity, while the rest of us are back home in primitive Indian land, everyone dressed the same, all in a tipi, of course. It’s absurd to think that Indians are a part of the world. Christ, she makes it sound like we live in Faerie or something.
As much as I admire their craft, I think they should admire the fact that I took the ideas that they have and turn it into something modern for someone who is not Native American.
Um…oh hell, I give up. White people, please get a fucking clue. In the comments, Beatrice pointed out something I should have noted in the first place:
As if distilling all the variety of different heritages of Roma people into “over the top trashy clown show” wasn’t offensive enough…
This isn’t just spectacularly fucking up Indigenous peoples’ cultures, it’s spectacularly fucking up that of Roma culture as well. I guess all is fair game for a white designer. If you can call pasting rhinestones all over something design.
Vincent Schilling’s article is here. TLC’s ‘Gypsy’ Wedding Is Offensive to Romani, Too.
See now, if they’d just had a Lord Of The Rings elven wedding, there’d be nobody to complain because the elven genocide was completed long ago.
Sorry, I ran out of snark in mid-comment. Let me go reload my snark tank and maybe I will revisit this issue someday.
Marcus:
You did better than me. This sort of thing just leaves me sputtering.
I think the stupid is melting my iPad.
Chigau:
Could be. Already got my brain.
She’s just so sincere, though, in her terrible attempt to avoid appropriation… But even her supposedly well-meaning lines just drip with disdain for what actual Indigenous people have created and keep creating themselves. Especially the last bit you highlighted:
Because different Tribes haven’t been doing similar things for far longer and with far more creativity, right? They should just look at her work and be WOWed with amazement because she is such a fucking genius inspired designer. She made it all so modern!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
The sad part about my brain is that it first went ‘pretty!’ before seeing all the disrespect underneath the fancy beading. :(
rq:
Yeah, by bejazzling everything with rhinestones! Wow, how creative. The actual work done by various Indigenous people is astonishing in its beauty and perfection, and mind-numbingly painstaking to make. It’s a hell of a lot more than ordering “native ‘merican” stuff off the internet from “native ‘merican” people, and arming yourself with rhinestones, feathers, and a hot glue gun. She couldn’t get close to the real deal. Here’s an example, and this is specifically Lakota beadwork:
So when white people are in the minority, what will we claim is being appropriated? McDonald’s? 80s Hair Bands? LOLcats?
Caine@#6:
Aaaarrrghghhh!!! The effort that must have taken to make!! (swoons)
Not to mention keeping that fringe clean.
Me@#7:
what will we claim is being appropriated?
The civil war! That’s it!!!
(cheerfully stomps all over the 3 post rule)
Here’s my excuse: if I fragment each idea into a comment of its own it’s easier to delete my ideas on a case by case basis if necessary! :D
As if distilling all the variety of different heritages of Roma people into “over the top trashy clown show” wasn’t offensive enough, the show really had to double down and make a mockery of Native American tribes as well.
I have great respect for intricate beadwork and needlework, esp. since my mum made our traditional clothing by hand when we were children. And that stuff isn’t nearly as complicated as the example at your #6!
A hot glue gun and a bunch of rhinestones is a cheapening of the whole process.
Beatrice @ 11:
Thank you. That’s a point I should have made.
Also this, thanks for pointing that out.
Post edited to include Beatrice’s point.
Dream Super Bowl match up:
The Philadelphia Founding Fathers versus the Charleston Segregationists
also
the Plains “war bonnet” was and is specifically male apparel.
Chigau:
Yes. And not to be worn by all men, either.
glue guns and sequins
This is cargo cult behaviour.
Superficial resemblances without any understanding of background or meaning.
I’ve only seen a couple of episodes, but a couple of Roma women getting into a fist fight on screen, the bride comically unable to fit her huuuuuge Barbie pink wedding dress into the car and shenanigans like that really stayed with me.
..
I wish they hadn’t.
And I’ve managed to erase Irish Travelers, who were apparently dominating the beginning (at least) of the British version. Dpn’t know about American.
source : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Fat_Gypsy_Weddings.
Sorry, back on topic. I just don’t like making the same mistake that we’re criticizing.
Just like women should be “accepting” of catcalls because they are really just compliments from the men doing the catcalls.
Nice work—equating cultural appropriation with the assimilation to the mainstream culture that is/has been considered desirable (read that, “insisted upon, often with violence”) by the mainstream culture.
*pause*
Y’know, I actually read someone complaining that minorities have been Appropriating (White) Culture—specifically referring to Xianity.
S/he seemed to be serious.
Clearly, history class was Something That Happened To Other People, while s/he was having Nap Time.
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Ah! Here we go:
TLC’s ‘Gypsy’ Wedding Is Offensive to Romani, Too.
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Cicely, I missed that completely! Thank you!
I have a major issue with this as a first nation person. A woman would not wear a head dress. It’s very wrong and upsetting. We shouldn’t be grateful some white person stole our culture. Again. :/
well Im Cherokee Creek and Powhatan… And My 7th grandfather was Wahunsenacawh aka Pocahontas father, I am in the Pine Hill Indian Tribe as well. Wished i could post my photos on here, I am honored to wear my Eagle feather, which I have my CDIB as well, but this i dont care if it was her own wedding it is wrong, im sure she caught alot of hell for this, Her husband as being a Native American aka Indigenous knows better I would think… My husband is Lakota and Cherokee and he would of had a fit! I am not going to go so hard on her but she is very ignorant to our Culture period. She looks ridiculous, She should of went with her own culture.