Glastonbury Feather Headdress Ban Is A Good Reminder Why We Need To Knock It Off with Cultural Appropriation

Glastonbury goes official on not dressing like a dick at a festival

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by Laura Silver |
Published on

Tis the season to get sloshed on mulled wine before you’ll be considering dancing in a muddy field again, but following another mega ticket sell out for Glastonbury 2015, its organisers are giving you a head on start on how not to look like a dick at a festival by officially banning the sale of Native American headdresses at the event.

In response to a change.org petition started two months ago by Daniel Round, a West Midlander who had presumably seen one be-feathered Coachella picture too many, ‘Indian headdresses’, as they are now listed among prohibited items on the traders section of Glastonbury’s website, won't be sold at the festival, despite the campaign only attracting 65 signatures. No news as yet on whether dreadlock-embellished Rasta caps and stick-on bindis will meet the same fate.

READ MORE: What Not To Wear To Festivals: Cultural Appropriation Edition

There's been a collective vibe of enough is enough, when it comes to cultural appropriation lately, which peaked when Pharrell swapped his innocently questionable massive hat for feathered head-gear usually reserved for Native American spiritual leaders, for his appearance on the cover of Elle magazine this summer, so while the number of signatures might be small, they act as a final underlining of what was already written in the sand.

At the height of the debate during festival season The Debrief contributor Zing Tsjeng, pointed out on this very website that ‘wearing the bindi headdress reinforces all-too-real inequalities between those who can get away with it as a fun accessory and those who can’t wear them without being judged for their skin colour or heritage’, so let’s use this news as an important reminder of the impact of cultural appropriation in our style choices.

Oh, and if someone could page Miley Cyrus and the giant prosthetic arse she’s twerking with on stage these days, that’d be great.

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Picture: Getty

This article originally appeared on The Debrief.

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