cultural property

my friend S gets irked by J's tattoo on her arm, which depicts an indigenous Guatemalan woman drawn in a cartoonish style. S is guatemalan american, and j is not. S would like to tell J what she thinks about her tattoo. after some role playing, there seems to be reasonable points to both sides.

and that's officially ok, but unofficially irritating.

j's projected perspective (coming from our drunken, overestimating assumptions) is that she got the tattoo during her month long stay in Guatemala. she possibly made some meaningful relationships there, perhaps with women, and felt connected to the country. she wanted to simultaneously immortalize that wonderfully spiritual and eye opening experience and celebrate Guatemalan culture by inking a cheesy representation of some anonymous guatemalan woman dressed in traditional clothing onto her arm. then, when she returned home to northern california, she could have bragging rights about speaking fluent spanish and spout off endless stories that began with, "well, when I was in guatemala. . ."

j sees harm in political borders and wants to smash cultural barriers--for she is feminist, hear her rwar. j wants to have real connections with women all around the globe. j wants to expand her horizons and carry a more worldly knowledge. good for j.

s feels that living in a white dominated world, the representations of guatemala she gets to see are too often caricatures and stereotypes of a guatemala that she doesn't know to really exist. this woman on j's arm mocks S's guatemalan "realness." not only is she mocked, but living in a guatemalan-less environment, she feels in some way DEFINED by it. this woman on J's arm looks nothing like her mother, sister, or grandmother who immigrated from guatemala. S is bothered because J is constructing guatemalan-ness, which, for seemingly cogent reasons, is not acceptable when you are not guatemalan, is it?

S also questions the idea of traveling for the purposes of "broadening one's horizons" or "just seeing what that country is like," which is what J got to do. Sure, we all want to see the world, but when it's more of a right for some than for others, isn't it just an annoying exercise of unearned privilege? S reasons that her own grandmother had to immigrate to secure herself a livable future. yeah right, like she was going become a stranger in an english speaking country just to "see what it was like." it probably didn't occur to s's gramma to conjure up an image of a stereotypical "traditional" american woman to slap permanently on her arm in order to have bragging rights in guatemala. who does that?

when it gets down to the nitty gritty, it probably isn't really about the tattoo on J's body. S respects that J can do whatever she pleases with her body. it's more the idea that there is an uneven sense of entitlement for some people to create, distort, reproduce, and distribute historical socio-political ideas and concepts about other groups without consent. furthermore, S is bothered because those distortions of guatemalan people seem to serve the purpose of reinforcing someone else's ethnic, cultural, and racial "normalcy."

my roommate posted a quote in our bathroom that reads, "beauty must be defined as what we are, or else the concept itself is our enemy." what if that quote read, "we must be defined as what we are, or the concept of us itself is our enemy." S needs to be defined by what she is, not by what is more exotic and interesting for others to imagine her to be. it is an arduous task to wield the power of self definition in a world that constantly shapes your self-concept for you, then punishes you if you do not fit.

so we got into a discussion about cultural property. who constructs and own's guatemalen-ness? what are the differences between cultural celebration/appreciation and cultural appropriation? When does owning cultural property become stifling to cultural fluidity and transformation? when should borders be smashed? when should they be erected?

time to sleep.