Over the weekend, when I was at my parents’ house I was surprised by yet another gift from my mom, a Salwar Kameez. And guess what- It didn’t fit me. I was mad, but it wasn’t the first time this has happened. So I asked her to return it but there was the catch—She can’t, because she ordered the dress from a high-end boutique in India and had it shipped here. Talk about diaspora connections! These dresses are expensive and can run from $100-$500 and as I found out there is a new style every season. So, women buy new clothes every season which are ridiculously overpriced, I think. Anyways, the Salwar Kameez didn’t fit me and there is no way I can return it or exchange it. So I am stuck with an ill-fitting dress that I do not like.

This incident serves as an example of diasporic connections that Raghuram and Hardill write about in their article. Indian diaspora populations have connections back home in the form of these boutiques which primarily cater to overseas populace. There is a rising trend of importing clothes from India which are “in” currently, as opposed to the stores selling “outdated” items here. There is a network established by women here who send for clothes from the boutiques and are willing to pay high prices. My mom found out about it from a friend and immediately placed an order. There is an uprising of a new industry that caters just to overseas Indians who are willing to pay big bucks for their orders and the local boutique owners make every effort to rip them off. And like the clothes shops in London, this sort of business "feed many diaspora clothes markets." (Bhachu) Hence, I think it is only a matter of time until this sort of fashion industry, if it hasn’t already (come on, even my mom knows about it!) becomes more widespread among the Indians overseas who are looking for more trendy and up-to-date fashion. Who knows, maybe even mainstream fashion can draw from it or contribute to it.

Bindi...blog # 3

Man!! I LOVE being Indian. I love the traditional attire, (mainly because I look hot in them =) the music, the movies, the bindis and everything else that is Indian. Even though im a third generation Fijian Indian (which means that my great grandparents were from India and every generation thereafter were born and raised in the Fiji islands), I like to think of myself as "Desi". This is because I am not native Fijian (we look completely different).

So let me get to the point. When i watched the video in class about the bindi being appropriated, i honestly did not feel insulted. I think that it is ok for westerners to adorn the bindi. The bindi was traditionally worn by only married Indian women to show that they were not single anymore. This bridal bindi was only red in color. Later, different colors of bindis were used by single Indian women as a fashion statement. The bindi lost it's "religious" or "significant" value, other than as an Indian woman's cultural possession. SO since the bindi isnt as important anymore (many Indian women hardly ever wear it), i think it is ok for westerners to experiment with it. Afterall, can we honestly say that we haven't taken or appropriated elements of the Western world?

According to Kim and Chung in "Consuming Orientalism: Images of Asian/American women in multicultural advertising", orientalism by the westerners is very detrimental towards Asians. Indians are seen as exotic. While this may be true, i think that something as minute as the bindi, should not be of concern in regards to the Indian culture....we have bigger things to worry about ...like the appropriation of the Kamasutra. I wrote a 10 page research paper on the appropriation of the kamasutra a couple years ago. Maybe in my next blog, i'll enter some of my findings.

peace out!

Reflection

I am not sure about everyone, but some times I sit in front of my computer and reflect on life (I think most people call it procrastination). Most of the time when I do this, I think about one person: my grandmother. My grandmother passed away 5 years ago, but I constantly think about her because of all the hardships she went through to support her family and her survival through the chaos of living in China after World War II.

I remember during the first couple of classes, Professor lectured on China and footbinding. Although my great grandmother was dead by the time I was born, my dad was old enough to remember her. My great grandmother had her foot binded as a child and lived her entire life with "tiny feet". My dad and aunts always felt sorry for her because she could not walk by her 60s. I used to believe that footbinding was a way to keep woman in a "subservient domestic state ... [and] ...rendered them sex objects to satisfy certain perverted erotic fantasies of men" (Ko, 1997). However, my relatives never remember an instance when my great grandmother complained about not walking. She embraced it and thought it was a shame that footbinding is lost. For her, footbinding was a beauty and class symbol and she continued with her footbinding practices until her death. So what is beauty? Not only is it determined by class, but also defined by the people living it. Like fashion, beauty is an idea and changes with time. When fat was considered a sign of beauty, people followed it. Now that it no longer holds true in our society, new ideas of beauty takes it's place.
People try so hard to achieve "beauty" today. From weight lost pills to diets to buying expensive (or overpriced) products to achieve the "look". Like the women in "Language of Dress in the Middle East", buying the most expensive clothes is just a way to achieve beauty for those of that socioeconomic class. Beauty has become a class label. Maybe paying hundreds and thousands of dollars to diet to that 5'8" 110 look, is a way to achieve that socioeconomic class we all aspire to be in - the upper class Dior, Gucci, LV carrying gents and ladies.
On the same note, I read an article about Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie's plans for the birth of their twins. 70 million dollars mansion, flying Angelina in a helicopter to a nearby hospital...WOW...and still looking stick thin. I think everyone is so jealous and envious of them because there were so much bashing about them...you can only wish you were them!

I neeeeeed new flip flops

ok maybe this is a cry for help or something because I really need new flip flops. I usually get my flip flops from old navy because i'm broke and they come in a variety of colors and fit well and comfortably. I obviously cannot buy them considering the agenda at hand but i really need flip flops. I guess what this blog is more about is the consideration of ebaying it. I have never bought anything from ebay not because i don't want to but because i don't know how to work it. SOOOOO since my friend has an account i'm going to ask him to order it for me. I realize although its hard on me not to get them right away although i desperately need them i'll save money and a trip to the mall. So like a good humanitarian that i'm trying to be, i went home and looked up where they were made just to be a little more conscious. They are made in China, not good. This project is realllllly harder than I thought because i've had these flip flops for a year and a half now. For those of you that just wear tennis shoes...that's a LONG life for flip flops that you wear often. So i pull out an old pair of vans although they match with nothing that i'm wearing and i walk outside, get ridiculed by my friend who's a fashion guru and suck it up. So i go back in and change my whole outfit and I look like a punk rock kid. I look at my clothes that i put great effort into matching my shoes with and decide to go out with that. So when i got home and decided to write this blog i realized that what i'm currently wearing relates to the article "A Crowded Street as Streetwear is Disseminated into the Mainstream, What will Become of an Underground Movement". I don't actually know what i'm wearing. I think i'm pretty sure i know how to put together an outfit that looks good that's so called "underground" looking but until that article i didn't know that those clothes even meant anything or that some people get offended that the people wearing those clothes don't know the "story" behind it. Does that make me a poser? i just like them because they
look good but what do i know. It also reminded me of the article "Japanese schoolgirl Inferno" where their looks actually mean certain things or who or what they actually represent. I don't know if i should care or if i'm being ignorant and just wearing something because i like it, like when Caucasians sport bindis not knowing what i really represents or how much the people of that culture resent them wearing it. Anyone wanna answer this one?

Vietnamese ao dai... blog #3

Last weekend my mother attended a typical Vietnamese wedding and wore a fushia and purple "ao dai," the traditional Vietnamese dress, that she purchased in Vietnam a few years ago. I've always looked at the ao dai as being the same as other ao dais that I see other ladies wear. But since taking this fashion class, it made me wonder what would an "authentic" ao dai be like. Is there are different cut? Would the colors be more demure? And finally, the ao dai that my mother is wearing, is it a more fashionable version that is catered to Viet Kieu tastes due to the revival of the ao dai in the 1990s (Ao Dai Revival, Valverde)? Other questions come in mind also, such as who designed it, where is the fabric from, and etc. As we live in the age of globalization and commodity culture (Tracing Transnationalities, Dwyer), one can never be sure which networks of production a garment has been through to become what one would purchase as the final product. Clothes in my eyes can never be seen as simply as before.

ok so I did slip (entry 3)

Okay, I admit that I did slip over the weekend but, in my defense I blame the long weekend. I bought a bikini top that went with a bikini bottom that I had bought two weeks ago while on a shopping excursion with my aunt. I found the bikini top on Ebay and was not hesistant whatsoever in purchasing it because it completed the set! After I had bought it them I realized that I was the epitome of consumerism buying things that I did not need however, since I did buy it on ebay I'm not sure if it is new or not. I still feel guilty about going on Ebay and doing online shopping because all that did was tempt me even more. One thing I noticed about myself even more was that shopping is a HUGE part of my life especially when I'm bored. I caught myself shopping online five times already today alone and today is not even over yet! This is why I decided that in order to avoid tempting myself and buying something else I will focus all my attention on my papers and studying for my final. Hopefully by channeling my energy on something extremely time consuming I will not think about shopping or worse buy something. My addiction to shopping reminded me of Kawamura's article and I remembered in it she talked about how fashion is excess while, clothing is a necessity. This quote really made me think about the useless items that I buy on my weekly shopping rendezvous. During moments of my weakness I would usually come up with reasons to justify my purchases such as "Potato sacks are making a comeback this year..." sarcasm aside, I would come up with any reasons to make me feel guiltless about wasting money. I remember there was this one purchase that I made that I highly regretted till this day; it was a Sanrio handbag that for some reason appealed to me at the time and despite my denial of it now there was a small part of me that thought I could rock the whole Japanese cutesy look. Reminiscing about this reminds me of the article on Japanese street fashion that we read in class a few weeks about the variety of streetwear that Japanese teen would wear. Even though I was not aware that I was being affected by the influence of it at the time I realize now that I was. This was an eye opener to me and I think the next time I do shop I am going to think about the reasons why I buy certain things and where do these influences come from.

hello kitty....blog 2

I always liked hello kitty as a child. I was never really that feminine or so called girly at all but one thing I did realllllly like was hello kitty because they had yummy gum and cool stationary. I already have a few things like necklaces and alarm clocks that are of hello kitty characters(btw I bought these recently). I went to vacaville today to help my shopaholic friend feel better from her breakup with her bf of two years and for the 50th time ran across the official Sanrio store(home of hello kitty and friends). I walked inside feeling giddy and then realized that I'm not actually supposed to purchase anything due to the assignment and I was....ummm pretty sad..... However i thought about it and realized that I probably shouldn't promote this kind of production as i am unaware of where it comes from and who actually made this product. In the article "Forever in Trouble" it discusses how the garment industry employees are mistreated and how poor their working conditions are. This hello kitty store also mass produces clothing and bags other than trinkets. I was holding a pink rhinestone necklace with the iconic hello kitty face on it and was so eager to take it home but I took a second glance at it and was really torn because it was so pretty and yet it was representative of mistreatment of disadvantaged individuals. I noticed that 50% of the consumers in the store were Caucasian and that struck me because I noticed how much asian culture has influenced the American society as discussed in the article "Asian Fashion Entrepreneurs in London". The author talks about how traditional Indian suits have greatly influenced the London fashion industry, how it is in now even though it was ridiculed before. I remember when it wasn't cool to be asian and even other minorities made fun of "chinky" eyes and our "ridiculous" customs. I remember having to go up against so much discrimination which probably explains why I grew up with so much aggression and pride in my culture from constantly defending it. Anywhoooo, i put the darn necklace down and walked away partially because i was irritated that so many Caucasians were sporting it and I didn't want to promote indifference the world's culminating problems of human expendability. This project is kind of hard for a day to day thing I'll admit. However, I do want to stop human trafficking one day so this is one step towards the betterment of humanity so I guess every little thing helps.