One of the various pop stars who has been retroactively criticized for cultural appropriation is Gwen Stefani, who closely integrated Japanese tradition into each her music and merch within the 2000s. During the promotional marketing campaign for Stefani’s 2004 solo album Love. Angel. Music. Baby., she was typically accompanied by Japanese backup dancers referred to as the Harajuku Girls, and the tour supporting the album was referred to as the Harajuku Lovers Tour. In 2008, she launched her Harajuku Lovers fragrance line. In hindsight, the entire thing didn’t sit effectively with some observers, together with a journalist with Allure who requested Stefani about it throughout a current interview.
In a narrative about Stefani’s new GXVE Beauty line, Allure’s Jesa Marie Calaor defined that she’d felt seen by the Harajuku fragrance as a Filipina American teen, citing it as a uncommon look of Asian tradition within the American mainstream, however that as an grownup she’d reexamined the product and been disturbed by a white girl leveraging Asian tradition for revenue.
Calaor concluded her interview by asking Stefani what she’d discovered from the Harajuku Lovers backlash. Stefani responded by repeating a narrative she’s beforehand shared about how her father’s job at Yamaha uncovered her to Japanese tradition as a toddler. The story led as much as Stefani, a self-described Italian American “mutt,” declaring, upon visiting Japan herself years later, “My God, I’m Japanese and I didn’t know it” — a phrasing that, no matter your stance on how tradition needs to be wielded, comes off fairly clumsy in context.
Here’s the related excerpt from the story:
“That was my Japanese influence and that was a culture that was so rich with tradition, yet so futuristic [with] so much attention to art and detail and discipline and it was fascinating to me,” she mentioned, explaining how her father (who’s Italian American) would return with tales of road performers cosplaying as Elvis and classy ladies with colourful hair. Then, as an grownup, she was capable of journey to Harajuku to see them herself. “I said, ‘My God, I’m Japanese and I didn’t know it.’” As these phrases appeared to hold within the air between us, she continued, “I am, you know.” She then defined that there’s “innocence” to her relationship with Japanese tradition, referring to herself as a “super fan.”
“If [people are] going to criticize me for being a fan of something beautiful and sharing that, then I just think that doesn’t feel right,” she instructed me. “I think it was a beautiful time of creativity… a time of the ping-pong match between Harajuku culture and American culture.” She elaborated additional: “[It] should be okay to be inspired by other cultures because if we’re not allowed then that’s dividing people, right?”
The full story, which incorporates Calaor’s personal reflections on the interview, might be discovered right here.