Gwen Stefani has been repeatedly accused of “cultural appropriation” because of her love of Japanese street style, but the pop icon isn’t caving in.
Speaking to Paper Magazine, Stefani said there would be much less beauty in the world if people stopped cultural appropriation.
The issue the singer has received the most heat for has been over her Harajuku clothing line and backup dancers.
“I had this idea that I would have a posse of girls — because I never got to hang with girls — and they would be Japanese, Harajuku girls, because those are the girls that I love. Those are my homies,” Stefani told Paper. “That’s where I would be if I had my dream come true, I could go live there and I could go hang out in Harajuku.”
Stefani also insisted that the rules of cultural appropriation are divisive and stop the sharing of beauty.
“If we didn’t buy and sell and trade our cultures in, we wouldn’t have so much beauty, you know?” Stefani said. “We learn from each other, we share from each other, we grow from each other. And all these rules are just dividing us more and more.”
She also essentially said that there was more freedom before woke mobs took over social media looking for things to be angry about.
“I think that we grew up in a time where we didn’t have so many rules,” she said. “We didn’t have to follow a narrative that was being edited for us through social media, we just had so much more freedom.”
The superstar also pushed back on the belief that celebrities have a duty to wade into political issues.
“Ska she’s always happy to discuss, but Stefani was brought up to keep her electoral preferences personal, and that rule has held for her entire career,” writes Gillespie.
“The whole point of voting, is you have this personal space to feel how you feel,” Stefani said. “I use my platform to share my life story and to engage with people and to exchange whatever gift I was giving. I’m not a political science major. I am not that person. Everyone knows that. So why would I even talk about it?”
The hits didn’t stop there, she also shot down the idea that you need to virtue signal on social media.
“I don’t need to go on Instagram and say ‘girl power.’ I just need to live and be a good person and leave a trail of greatness behind me,” she said. “Stop talking about it and stop trying to bully everybody about it. Just do it. And that’s how I feel like I’ve lived my life.”
Bravo!
