Eek! Appropriation! Eek!

Randa Jarar writes about the horror, the horror, of non-Arabic women doing belly dancing, especially when they wear Arabic-style ("Orientalist") clothing and make-up when doing so.

This, she says, is simple "appropriation" of Arabic women's culture, somehow stealing something that doesn't belong to them.

Um ….

First off, I sincerely doubt that belly dancing (or Raqs Sharqi) sprang up, full-blown, across the Arab world.  Instead, it likely borrowed elements from different cultures that intersected across the Middle East and beyond, carried on cultural and trade and military tides through the region.

Secondly, that's just a plain goofy assertion, as wrongheaded as a German being offended by an Arab orchestra playing Mozart, or a Japanese accusing an Italian sushi bar owner of "appropriation."

Now, I don't deny that early borrowings of belly dancing to the West were laden with "Orientalist" oohs and aahs about those Strange Exotic Women with Their Shimmying Sensuous Hips and all the other Nineteenth Century tripe that went with it.  And you can still see elements of that in mass media into the modern era.

But that's very different, to my mind, from a blonde in Cincinnati studying and practicing belly dancing, not because she's trying to rob Arabic women of their identity (somehow), but because she enjoys it.  If a woman in Cairo wants to become a Disco Queen, more power to her, too.

Now, a blonde from Cincinnati changing her name to something Arabic-sounding, dying her hair, and passing herself off (at least on stage) as Arabic is something a little different — though it's still not the mockery of blackface in minstrel shows.

Culture spreads. It's not the private domain of anyone. Pretending to be "authentic" is one thing, but adopting elements of other cultures because they please you or mean something to you isn't "appropriation," it's the way culture works, moves, evolves. It doesn't diminish the original, it just adds to the tapestry of human experience.