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| Also listed in: Campus Progress Blog |
If you've been to almost any major metropolitan area recently, you've undoubtedly noticed trendy young hippies sporting rockin' checkered scarves around their necks and thought, "I wish I were that cool!" Well now you CAN be--for the low, low price of trivializing and commercializing a vibrant cultural (and national) tradition. These scarves, which are sold at, among other places, Urban Outfitters, are reproductions of the traditional Palestinian male headdress (kaffiyeh) that became symbols of the Palestinian nationalist struggle. But recently, this emblem of a distant culture has transformed into a chic badge of upper-middle-class fashion-forwardness. It's one thing to sport a gimicky trend to seemlessly blend in with the cool kids in midtown Manhattan; it's entirely different to cheapen the meaning and value of a cultural and political legacy that will, rest assured, outlive any cover of Vogue.
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Plus, if someone is just wearing one to be fashionable that opens up the opportunity to inform them of the real reason they should be wearing one! It's all good!
And trying to inform usually does nothing. I've tried it on the 2 train a couple of times--I'm met with blank stares. Sigh.
you can spend your whole life combatting capitalism and still have your face printed on a shirt at the gap
really?
so, in other words, you encourage kids to be ignorant, symbol-wearing fashionistas over actually knowing the significance of deeply political symbols?
i'm interested in hearing how you can justify this.
I had to throw that out there in defense of the real hippies of the world.
Great, valid post Nazik.
These hipster bug me, but far be it for me (or anyone) to take the high road on this.
Whether you sympathize with the Palestinian cause or not, wearing a kaffiyeh while sitting in a campus bar in Toronto or LA hardly constitutes activism to me...
It is so often the case that political issues become fashion statements -- Brad Pitt builds houses in New Orleans and adopts children from impoverished countries... you get the idea.
In my view to really understand an issue you have to physically go to the place where it is taking place; in Israel, for example, things are very, very complicated, and wearing scarves or buttons saying this or meaning that has little effect to my mind.
And this goes for Westerners, whether they be Jewish, evangelicals, "secular Christians" Muslim or Arab, as well, for that matter for Muslims and Arabs in other countries, who have never been to the Levant itself...
David
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