Oh, Avril Lavigne. Once, many years ago in a land far, far away you spoke to my troubled tween soul about tween stuff. And you made it seem all deep and hip to wear lots of eyeliner. But ye gods how our paths have changed since then! Now I'm still emerging from a classic rock music snob phase and you're succumbing to the dark abyss of I-didn't-realize-it-was-racist.
I watched the video for you so you don't have to. Basically, the twenty-nine-year old jumps around in a strange, uncomfortable-looking skirt, eats sushi, and tries to sing in Japanese. I'm not going to go on and on about how bad the video is, because there's a much more important issue at hand here and the article gets into plenty of detail itself.
Cultural appropriation is no new trend, but it is a seriously problematic one that needs to stop. Celebrities and fashion movements pick and choose random bits of other cultures that they find glamorous and exotic, like hijabs or Native American headdresses. They're often romanticized and sexualized by people who don't know what they really mean, and when celebrities publicly endorse this epidemic they're spreading the message that it's not racist, it's not wrong. In Lavigne's case, she's prancing around with her prop-like Asian backup singers and trying to speak Japanese with the expertise of any average white anime fan. Cases of cultural appropriation like this commercialize and trivialize entire races, countries, and heritages until they're reduced to these mangled objects that once held value and weight but have since been rendered unrecognizable by a new wave of fans.
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