Alien Encounters

After reading Maira's perspective on the sorts of orientalist appropriations happening with Indian culture, I have some thoughts. The tone throughout the essay is that Westerners are cheapening these traditional Indian practices. For example, there's the American guy who wanted a mendhi tattoo of Tweety Bird on his shoulder. His request seems to disappoint the shopkeeper, as well as Maira. What I think is interesting about this case, and about mendi in generally, is that, regardless of it's cultural significance to Indians, it's a surprisingly sought after commodity. Mendi is beautiful in it's brown color, sourced naturally from plants, processed at home, applied thoughtfully, and short-lived on the body. I think if you don't consider the Indian part of the equation, people would still want it, because it's just cool. So, my thinking is that no culture can just claim a plant or art like temporary tattooing for itself; everyone on the planet should be free to paint themselves with brown seed juice. However, the issue I see is that a large amount of mendhi users are more interested in the Indian or "indo chic" aspect of the activity than their own artistic expression. I think using a distant people as a symbol of magic and mysticism is sort of ignorant and definitely offensive. People wishing to partake in body painting should feel free to use this most useful technique as a medium, but should seek to explore their own artistic desires, rather than try to perpetuate a stereotypical aesthetic of Indian culture by pretending like they are engaging in traditional mendhi. This basically comes down to a gray area in my eyes where there is no real line that says one thing is orientalist and the other is self-expression; however, here are some clues during your mendhi design layout to help you decide you've gone too far: you find yourself looking to the east imagining flying Vimanas and blue deities for inspiration, you find yourself describing your masterpiece as "indo-chic", or you are under any delusion whatsoever that you're basically now an honorary Indian. As for Sari's and Bindi's, I don't see as much of a clear utility that any odd white person is entitled too. If it were discovered that a Sari was hands-down the best workout attire you could get your hands on, we could have a different discussion, but that day has yet to come. Sorry white people, no Sari's for you.