”The thing about this appropriation of the burqa that people need to understand is that people like Lady Gaga haven’t done a thing for the communities [here and abroad] that wear, live and breathe the garb who are subjected to harassment for doing so. The words “appreciation” and “admiration” are painfully hollow when you take a piece of clothing from a community and strip it of its intent and the consequences that come from it. Lady Gaga makes millions and taxes subsequently take a huge chunk of those millions. Therein, a quarter of her taxes are used to ravage Muslim majority populations. Has she spoken out about this? Has anyone orientalist who bastardizes our garb done so? Where were they when the Sikh tragedy happened? Where are they now when Newsweek posts a horribly offensive article on Muslim rage, aggressively written by their puppet Ayaan Hirsi Ali, who I’m ashamed to call my fellow Somali? Do they come to our defense when we’re expected to kneel over and apologize on behalf of extremists, who funnily enough kill us as well? If I wear a burqa, nijab.. or hell even a fucking hijab, I’m a stupid, brown savage who has no capacity to think for herself. But when Gaga wears it, its revolutionary and fashionable. People love to scream equality and colorblindedness when such an event arises, but such a world is completely theoretical until we fix these the caricatured perceptions about Islam. The power dynamics here cannot be ignored.

My friend Khadijah and her thoughts on Lady Gaga recently being spotted donning a “burqa” (via mdsh)

I cannot fucking STAND the fact that she gets away with this shit, and in fact often gets praised for it because she’s being ~different~ and ~unique~ or something. The whole “Jo Calderone” shit at the VMAs pissed me off for the same reason…she was presenting herself as a man, and she even bound her breasts and apparently used the men’s bathroom at the event/parties, and no one questioned her for doing this. Meanwhile, trans* people literally get killed for that shit, and was she using it to raise awareness for trans* issues? No. She was doing it because she fucking can, and she was rubbing her privilege in the face of everyone who doesn’t have it. She’s doing the same fucking thing with this, and it pisses me off so much.

(via tuneofmycrazyheart)

Reblogging this from someone who reblogged it from me just for her comments.

(via athingcalledjoe)

(Source: maarnayeri)