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Gwen Stefani still doesn’t get what’s wrong with appropriation
Almost two decades after the release of Love. Angel. Music. Baby., Gwen Stefani’s 2004 solo debut, the debate as to whether or not the singer owed Japan an apology for cultural appropriation still rages.
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It was not the first time that Gwen Stefani has been fascinated by foreign culture and used its properties to blend with her style.
(Courtesy of the Muara Bagdja Team/-)
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lmost two decades after the release of Love. Angel. Music. Baby., Gwen Stefani’s 2004 solo debut, the debate as to whether or not the singer owed Japan an apology for cultural appropriation still rages. In a recent profilehttps://www.papermag.com/gwen-stefani-cover-story-2653109335.html interview for Paper Magazine, the 51-year-old singer admitted that she never regretted using four dancers of Japanese descent as her Harajuku sidekicks for the album’s aesthetic.
"If we didn't buy and sell and trade our cultures in, we wouldn't have so much beauty, you know?" she says in the interview. "We learn from each other, we share from each other, we grow from each other. And all these rules are just dividing us more and more."
The dancers: Maya Chino, Jennifer Kita, Rino Nakasone and Mayuko Kitayama were given stage names Love, Angel, Music and Baby, respectively. They accompanied Stefani for two album cycles, appeared as dancers on stage and in music videos, as well as on photoshoots. Kita, who grew up in Los Angeles, visited Japan for the first time on one of the tour legs. However, the four were required to be silent or only talk in Japanese in public to keep up with the Harajuku facade. In 2006, comedian Margaret Cho called out Stefani’s use of the Harajuku aesthetic, starting the debate on cultural appropriation. The singer consistently said all she did was harmless fangirling of a beautiful foreign culture.
Read also: Gwen Stefani and Blake Shelton are engaged
It was not the first time that Stefani was fascinated by foreign culture and used its properties to blend with her style.
During her days singing with ska band No Doubt, she often wore bindis that she said were given by the Indian mother of her then boyfriend and bandmate, Tony Kanal. Many accused her of being disrespectful to the South Asian culture that regards the bindi as a sacred adornment, not as a fashion statement. Stefani shrugged off those comments, saying that her fashion choice was not cultural appropriation but rather a form of cultural appreciation.
