"Actual Japanese people aren't bothered by Gwen Stefani!"
First off all, good job ignoring Japanese people in the diaspora who have been making their stance very clear bc you don't consider them to be Real Japanese and also pic.twitter.com/TbFVpjdrQz
So many takes about this Gwen Stefani controversy are from white people who think it’s okay—and meanwhile diaspora and other mixed Japanese people are saying why this is harmful because we’ve literally been denied our own heritage for a white woman to come in and take it.
seems to have had wider consequences than just giving us scoliosis from all that cringing.
According to a blind item shared by gossip mogul , the pop star’s PR team has allegedly cost her positive coverage from dozens of outlets because of how they reacted to the release of her interview.
“[Gwen Stefani’s] fully banned from all Condé Nast outlets after the Allure article and the way her team handled it,” the blind item read.
“No covers, no positive interviews, no reviews of her products, no glossy fashion couple write-ups for her and [], at least not for the time being — she made her bed and now has to lay in it (alone, without the harujuku girls to give her personality).”
OMG, I simply must know how they reacted. Did they have a go at ? The journalist who conducted the interview? How badly did they behave, that it led to something like this? What could they have possibly said?!
To put the alleged ban into perspective, Condé Nast owns , , , , , and , just to name a few. It’s currently the parent company of , none of which will be covering Stefani for the foreseeable future is this blind item is legit. Fkn yikes.
In case you missed what all this drama is about, Stefani — noted white person — after she insisted she could claim Japanese culture because she grew up in proximity to it. The rank takes to come out of this one were not fun, folks.
If you’re familiar with Gwen Stefani at all, you’ll probably know she’s been profiting off Japanese culture for some time now. Her first album was awash with imagery and caricatures of Japanese Harajuku culture. She even had four Japanese backup dancers who she named Love, Angel, Music and Baby — because using Asian women as silent, sexy props is totally normal and not at all problematic!
Stefani’s label “Harajuku Lovers” featured perfume bottles moulded after Japanese women, so this wasn’t a one-off thing. And then, get this, she the word “Harajuku” because her team claimed US audiences would associate it with her, not the Japanese district. Imagine trying to claim the name of an entire town because you feel that much entitlement to it, despite not even being part of that culture.
But sure, the 2000s were a different time and we were far less aware that cultural appropriation could be a sinister force.
Filipina-American journalist and senior editor of took this into account when she sat down to speak to Gwen Stefani about her new beauty line GXVE, and asked her if she had learned anything from those days.
“I said, ‘My God, I’m Japanese and I didn’t know it.’,” Stefani told Calaor when recalling travelling to Japan as an adult.
Calaor, literally an American Asian woman having this said to her face, was rendered momentarily speechless. In the moment where awkward silence hung, Stefani doubled down.
“I am, you know,” she insisted.
She also then accused anyone who has a problem with cultural appropriation as causing division.
Nice. So nuanced and not at all a white person centring themselves in a conversation about race.
The article went to town on Stefani and pointed out the many ways she’s profited off Asian aesthetics, despite her silence on the rising level of hate crimes against Asian people in America. .
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