this is actually embarassingly wrong, though. sure, she looks tacky but this is a purely white liberal construct we’re looking at here. generally speaking, people in contemporary japan aren’t going to see something like that as misappropriation, and it hardly makes sense to even try to look at it that way because harajuku is, you know, a shopping district that sells mass produced clothing. maybe this girl is doing something else noxious in the episode, but what’s presented here just isn’t that.

there is of course a line in the sand, and in this case in specific it’s basically between nicki minaj and gwen stefani. nicki was, and maybe still does, calling herself harajuku barbie because she’s drawn a lot of inspiration for her looks from the bright, colourful styles of the district. a district in a wealthy industrialized nation. there’s no real difference between that and calling herself rodeo drive barbie or camden square barbie. gwen stefani, you know, was paying asian women to follow her around like ornaments. that’s a problem.

i get kind of suspicious when people, especially in mainstream tv, overwhelmingly go after “weaboos” as soft targets because it seems like a smokescreen to avoid going after the actually deeply troublesome and normalized acts of commodifying and trivializing marginalized groups.

also, a teacher dragging a teenage girl that hard in front of her entire class is fucked up.

WTF, saying white people can’t wear “Harajuku” fashion is the same as saying only people from London can wear punk or only people from Hawaii can wear board shorts.

If she was wearing a bad kimono and shitty “geisha” face paint THAT would be cultural appropriation. Modern street style is not some kind of cultural tradition!