The Scandinavian Scarf: a long scarf-like garment that is taking the internet by storm. It is often used to style dresses and is worn around the neck. An elegant addition to your evening dresses.
Synonym: Dupatta
“The Great Shift” refers to the recent shift in society, social media, pop culture, and fashion where South Asians and their cultures are finally seen as… desirable.
But is this a revolution or an excuse for a deeper issue, one where South Asians have been shunned, shamed, bullied, and gaslit into thinking they were being culturally appreciated when they were being appropriated?
The recent fashion trend “Scandinavian scarf” is creating major turmoil on social media. This garment is being used by several fashion brands as a “fresh and exotic” accessory. South Asians have had enough. This issue goes far beyond the dupatta. The pashmina and bandana faced a similar fate, being rebranded into something “exotic”, worn without acknowledging its cultural significance, and eventually being erased from South Asian culture and being adopted as something the West “invented”. Once they were out of trend, they were back to being shunned and made fun of. It’s everywhere, the stereotypical “nerdy” brown side-character in TV shows, “Apu” in The Simpsons. Does the West decide when your culture is relevant and when it’s not?
A white woman wearing a lehenga is unique, bold, and exotic. Yet when a brown woman does, it’s too loud, “whitewashed”, inappropriate, or she’s “trying too hard”. The idea that it’s only pretty when a white person wears it, or it only tastes good when a certain person eats it, can be accredited to something called ingroup preference, a tendency to associate a certain group of people with a set of qualities, attributes, and “putting them on a pedestal”. In this case, society’s implicit bias towards white people contributes to why South Asian culture seems to be recognized when it’s on a white person.
After the fetishizations of South Asian culture, clothing, and people, people are being allowed to steal, rebrand, appropriate, and commit cultural erasure by refusing to acknowledge the purpose, roots, and people behind the culture. Suddenly, jhumkas are “bohemian”, dosas are “spicy crêpes”, and the dupatta is a “Scandinavian scarf”.
Yet, once South Asians begin standing up for themselves and showing the true significance of their rebranded cultural gems, society seems to run to a new target, a safer one. This is particularly evident in the yoga obsession in the early 2000s. White yoga instructors on TV were accredited for “creating” this sacred Hindu art form, not the Indian aunties already practicing yoga in their basements for millennia. Words such as “chakras” were thrown around without ever being explored for their cultural significance. Once South Asians began speaking about its true origins, the trend seemed to shift to other, “safer” options, like Pilates.
The list of things that south Asians were appropriated for is endless. However, this cultural shift is proof of so many tendencies and phenomena in human psychology, that it would be a crime to not be explored.
After everything, South Asians are left confused. They are not refusing to teach or share their intricate culture, but watching it be appropriated and rebranded cannot be ignored. On one hand, should they be grateful their culture is finally relevant, that their kurtas that were made fun of were now fashion statements? Or should they stand up for themselves and call out the blatant racism being directed at them? This state of confusion can be accredited to cognitive dissonance, a psychological discomfort or tendency when an individual holds conflicting beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors.
If we circle back to other cultures and people who have experienced this before, it seems that South Asians are some of the last to speak up. Black people, who were shunned from wearing their natural hair to their workplace as it was “unkempt”, East Asians, who were discriminated against for their ethnic features, such as monolids. All of these diverse cultures have been targeted and are still being targeted by the West, just like South Asians. But why do they refuse to empathize with South Asians the way they were able to with Europeans, such as acknowledging Italian culture? Was it because South Asians were more “forgiving”? Not really. This can be tied to yet another psychological tendency, selective empathy, the tendency to empathize with a certain group of people because they are more “like us” or align with our values and beliefs while ignoring others. Why is it possible for the West to acknowledge certain cultures, such as those of Europe, yet not others? This explains why European men with an accent are romanticized but not a brown man with the same feature. South Asians may be too “different”, too unsafe to empathize with, so they are alienized. Simple as that.
That difference is also what’s fetishized. South Asian products and culture is being rebranded as something “exotic”. Something new, fresh, unique, despite being original all along. This is, again, a psychological phenomenon, known as exoticism, a tendency to view other cultures as “other” or foreign, compared to the idealized versions. This can explain the casting of “whitewashed” South Asians, as in, those who conform to Western standards, in Hollywood, rather than those with accents and ethnic features. This explains why North Indian food is loved but not the chefs and rural cooks who created it. This explains why the Scandinavian scarf looks good on Western evening dresses, but not a dupatta on a kurta.
Between so much chaos, why is this behavior condemned over and over again? The stealing, rebranding, and cultural erasure of various people? That can also be tied to a psychological phenomenon, the system justification theory, where people are motivated to defend, bolster, and uphold the status quo, despite it being disadvantageous to certain groups/individuals. Humans crave chaos, but also order. This innate desire to justify the system, the actions we experience is to maintain that false sense of order, that everything is alright. The system justification theory is perhaps the most significant of the psychological phenomena mentioned in this article. It is present and active in our daily lives and can be considered a way of avoiding the problems we face.
There is so much turmoil regarding “The Great Shift”, and we are right in the middle of it. Whether South Asians are finally recognized and acknowledged, or whether this behavior falls under the radar, like so many other times, is up to debate. What you do know now, is the explanation behind the emotion and pattern behind this event. Do what you will with this, go down your next psychology rabbit hole, conduct a self-analysis, or even use it as the topic for your passion project! What’s important is to recognize the subtle cultural erasure and appropriation that is happening before us and calling it out, whether it pertains to us or not.
Psychological phenomena/tendency mentioned:
Cognitive dissonance
Ingroup preference
Selective empathy
Exoticism
System Justification Theory
🧷 Link drop: Ingroup bias video! : Ingroup Bias (Definition + Examples)
🧠 "NeuroNote": Cognitive dissonance: Your brain physically reacts to the contradiction between two beliefs/actions in the Anterior Cingulate Cortex (ACC), prompting it to remove the discomfort by changing beliefs or rationalizing it. In a way, your brain treats the world like a moral puzzle and it hates leaving it unfinished.
🪞 Reflection prompt: Why do you think people seem to condone/justify actions that are morally shunned when powerful people or enough people do it?