By now everyone has heard of Columbusing, the act of “discovering” something that has already existed forever, named after the explorer credited with finding the “New World.” Culprits of Columbusing include Elvis Presley, celebrated blues pioneer; middle-class white Americans who insist on drinking Mexican Coca-Cola; and the organizers of the Color Run, which sprays its participants with the brightly colored powders used at Holi, the spring Indian festival of love and colors.
Critics of Columbusing call it “cultural appropriation,” while others defend Columbusing as “cultural appreciation.” Regardless of where you stand on the issue, Columbusing will surely continue. Here are my predictions for The Next Big Thing (that has already existed forever) to hit mainstream white America.
Photo via Wikimedia Commons
Chinese New Year: If you’ve failed at your New Year’s resolutions, why not cut yourself a break and start over on the lunar calendar? Chinese New Year (which falls later this week!) is your chance to partake in some ancient rituals, the most important of which is returning to your ancestral home to spend time with your family. Instead of Gong Hey Fat Choy, how about we wish each other Heureux Nouvel An Chinois? Because everything sounds better in French, non?
Badminton: Huge in Asia, but practically nonexistent as a recreational sport in the U.S., other than in Asian immigrant communities. Like ping-pong and bocce ball, something about badminton feels inherently foreign and retro (a confluence irresistible to white hipsters). Can’t you imagine the Wes Anderson character, accessorized in matching head and wrist bands, infiltrating his local Chinatown badminton league? Soon, Brooklynites will take up the sport in Prospect Park and set up courts at outdoor patio bars, forming teams with names that pun on “shuttlecocks” (jokes that are definitely in no way homophobic, because they’re ironic). PBR will sponsor a badminton tournament, at which point the whole sport will be declared “so over.”
Mariachi Bands: Given the attire — sombreros, and dramatic charro suits adorned in paillettes and embroidery — mariachi bands, a musical staple at Mexican celebratory events, are almost begging to be Columbused by your local group of trumpet-blowing, guitar-strumming white people who have decided that ska, reggae, and jazz are all blasé (all having been previously Columbused). Check out their website: “100% Authentic Mariachi Entertainment. ¡Book us for your wedding or birthday party! Also available for pumpkin festivals, clam bakes, barge parties on the lake.”
One-Sheet Beauty Masks: Soaking your face with a cotton mask with holes cut out for eyes, nostrils, and mouth is part of the skincare regimen for many women in East Asia. Why hasn’t this beauty trend been Columbused by an American beauty conglomerate? Maybe because putting one on makes you look like Michael Myers, the killer from the Halloween slasher flicks? Not to worry! It’s nothing an endorsement from Gwyneth or Blake can’t solve. Market research cites that celebrity blonde locks + (anything) = $$$.
Huge Emoticons: If you’ve ever texted using KakaoTalk or Line, two messaging apps developed in Asia, you’re familiar with these next-level emoticons. Actually, I sincerely hope this does get Columbused by Apple, because sometimes I really want to iMessage my friend something that can only be illustrated with a cartoon rabbit farting with a no-fucks-given expression on its face, and the dead-eyed bunnies on the current iOS just aren’t cutting it.
Stepping: 2015’s hot new fitness trend is here. Forget your Bikram yoga and Soul Cycle, word on the street (Abbott Kinney; the Hamptons) is that you have to try Stepping. Over gluten-free lunches, white women who’ve tried Stepping will endorse their beloved new dance/exercise: Let me tell you, when I’m sweating and stomping in that studio, girl, it’s like I’m unleashing the fierce woman I always knew was buried deep inside me! I woke up like this! Bow down, bitches!
Indian-Themed Weddings: In an effort to outdo their best friend’s rustic hipster barn wedding, brides will go to new lengths to add whimsy to their big day. What better way than an “authentic” Indian-themed wedding? No one will remember all those “funny-sounding names” for the various events comprising the lavish multi-day affair, but they won’t soon forget the elephants, mehndi, gold jewelry, and saris. Anyone who doesn’t “get it” is just a racist.
Tags: columbusing, cultural appropriation, jean ho, racism
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Mariachi Columbusing is 100% a thing in my corner of LA. This article is way too real.
mi German exroomate has a band called fat mariachi (I mean, we live in Mexico City but still)
Austin too.
Give us about six months.
My soul is crying, for it is only a matter of time. For all these things. (FWIW, ever since the racist-ass Forever 21 thing, my money’s on Chinese New Year.)
That said, the stickers/huge emoticons are probably gonna be first- Facebook’s already got them in their messenger program. I’m waiting for them to hit normal texts. Nothing says “I love you” like a cartoon rabbit sullenly nuzzling a bottle.
THE CARTOON RABBIT WITH THE BOTTLE. Do you know what the bottle is supposed to be? I have no clue, but my roommate has used it on me.
No clue! I generally assume it’s booze, but it could also be milk or something.
For some reason I immediately jumped to mayonnaise, which was puzzling.
I’m invited to a Chinese New Year party this weekend. Guess exactly how many people of Chinese descent will be there.
I just got invited to a Chinese New Year party a couple of days ago. The future is now.
The movie Rachel Getting Married already columbused Indian-themed weddings.
Jinx!
Evidence #7: Rachel Getting Married
RIGHT?!!?!? All I could think about was the fact that NONE OF THEM WERE HINDU, or if they were it was “Hindu” in the sense of doing yoga like once a week and having a Ganesh somewhere around the house because it’s so “spiritual” and “Eastern religions” are just so much more “authentic,” you know?
That’s the thing! I’m not ever going to suggest that white folks take a hands-off approach to other cultures. We should be buyers, supporters, and sharers of art by nonwhite artmakers, otherwise we replicate the same inequality that is creating a real problem in book publishing and other media.
But it’s quite another thing for a film director to say, “How can we visually represent the merging of this interracial couple? I know! By borrowing extensively from a culture that is foreign to the bride, groom, and everyone else in this movie! This elaborately-sculpted fondant-coated elephant cake symbolizes the distance Rachel wants to put between her messed-up family and herself. Never mind about her husband.” All aboard, the Nina, Pinta, and Santa Maria are fixing to dock!
This times 100. There is a distinct difference between understanding and supporting makers and artists from around the globe and playing cultural dress up.
Oh man, I was so drunk when I watched that movie I totally forgot that was even a thing
I know someone who did this too. Quickly realizing Austin is the worst.
(Haha “realizing.” JK I’m mostly cool with it.)
My mother-in-law plays badminton. So I associate it with a bunch of white, senior women passing time in their village community Centre. Which also makes it perfect for hipsters.
I grew up with a net in my backyard, so it seems like a rural hippie thing to me that only later revealed itself (in high school) as kind of preppy. In ten years I’ll be a white senior woman, so hopefully I can slide back into it then without my ships hitting anyone.
My grandparents had a net! My cousin and I used to play all the time in very middle-class suburban white Indiana. It always just seemed old-fashioned to me, not particularly preppy or elitist or what have you. That’s probably from lack of thinking about it (aka privilege), though. I definitely never knew it had Asian roots.
The game as codified is British. China’s just better at it now.
(although its origins are traced to British officers stationed in India, themselves adapting a net-less game already popular in England but traced back to ancient Greece.)
I played badminton all the time growing up. It seemed less dangerous than volleyball. I am totally open for a comeback of that sport, and I don’t think it would be cultural appropriation.
I played badminton growing up, and look at me now: a white hipster-hippy-punk sponsored by Hamm’s (even better than PBR). Okay, I’m not sponsored by Hamm’s or Olympia but my baseball team is sponsored by a grimy bar that serves all of the above.
Yeah, I feel like some of these things aren’t “cultural appropriation” so much as they are “spread of a popular trend.” Insisting on performing the full tea ceremony every time you brew a cup at work, sure, since it involves misinterpreting/making assumptions about a cultural tradition, but a sport or popular cartoons used in text messaging? Different breed.
(And, I mean, maybe we did take Hello Kitty and chow mein, but we repaid that with McDonald’s, right?)
Also, PLEASE have a comeback of badminton. The city recreation department where I live actually sponsors three different leagues, though they’re not generally as fiercly competitive as the university’s badminton club, which is – wait for it – mostly East Asian grad students.
Yeah really.
Like shuffleboard, which hipsters have already gotten into. Is there a word for “the totally ironic appropriation of geriatrica by people who are defined chiefly by their eternal adolescence”? (Or are we just sticking with “Brooklyn”?) I can’t wait until prune-juice artisanal cocktails and 4pm dinunch (dinner + lunch, since brunch is so over) become a thing.
Normcore? Or is that slightly different? +5 for “geriatrica”, I am 100% using that.
Badminton has always seemed a super Junior Legue/Souther White Lady thing to do. And yes, I grew up with a combo volleyball/badminton net, too.
My sister and I played badminton in middle school and always associate it with elderly midwestern people. It’s such a fun sport, I hope it does catch on more!
I think there’s considerable overlap in what elderly midwesterners and elderly rural Canadians enjoy. But my dad and my husband both play badminton. I think small town rec centres may do it because the equipment requirements are pretty minimal.
Agreed. Signed, another Midwesterner. I also associate it with them being not rich, but probably middle class?
I have a friend who plays a lot of badminton, pretty seriously. He’s from Budapest. Not sure what that adds to this.
We had a badminton team in high school and I played varsity badminton for 3 years, so I would totally welcome a badminton explosion.
Douchey frat boys types already were playing it ironically 15 years ago to my knowledge….
I had a high school gym teacher who put us through a really fierce badminton unit, because she had gone to college on a badminton scholarship.
Badminton. Scholarship.
In high school gym class, they forced us to play a lot of different team sports, and badminton was the only one I didn’t completely and utterly suck at. (It’s so much easier to hit a shuttlecock than a tennis ball or a volleyball, if you’re an uncoordinated and deeply unathletic teenager.) I would play it again, but not if it becomes a Columbusing phenomenon.
Yeah, it was always a Thing White People Did when I was growing up, because you could play it in the yard, unlike tennis (a Thing Richer White People Did). The Asian kids played too, sure, but it was really, really white.
I know badminton has roots in India, but in my mind (and in my experience) it’s firmly associated with afternoons on the grassy lawn, linen shorts, and a tray of Tom Collinses tinkling with ice. I grew up playing badminton, and my last game (more of a toss-around, really, because it was between me and a child) was less than six months ago and OH NO THE APPROPRIATION IS CALLING FROM INSIDE THE HOUSE. I have looked into the abyss and it is me.
*weeps*
We had a whole quarter of badminton in high school gym. This was welcomed with open arms, mostly because we had spent the previous three quarters playing volleyball. I think they were just too lazy to take down the nets.
Haaaaah the same thing happened at my school.
I bruise ridiculously easily, so I spent most of freshman year with some very unhappy forearms. I still bear a grudge towards the sport of volleyball, in all forms.
i HATE volleyball. Hurts like heck when you try to serve!
I’ve always hated badminton cause I suck at judging where that raquet is for some reason. I do fine with other raquet sports, I liked raquetball a lot in college.
Playing badminton in gym class always got dangerous, because we always had to play doubles on tiny “courts” and most of us sucked and would consistently smack our partner with the racquets because we would both go for the birdie/shuttlecock (is there some kind of regional/class distinction about what you call it?) at the same time. PAINFUL.
We had it in gym class for most of high school, and it was great! My friends and I would stand around talking and halfheartedly swat the birdie at each other occasionally. It’s very easy to play halfheartedly and poorly, unlike horrible running or throwing gym activities.
(It was also pretty fun on the rare occasions where we actually tried to play, but the point of gym class in high school is to endure it, not enjoy it.)
One of the great things about getting older and more boring by the day, as a straight white man, is that I’m pretty sure my days of “discovering” or Columbusing anything cool are long, long gone.
Hooray for middle age…(she said, wearily).
The mariachis have already happened in California, where all new trends start. We had a mariachi band at my high school graduation.
I was gonna ask if badminton counts as Columbusing, since it’s trajectory was Europe -> Asia. But then I googled its origins, and wikipedia claims it was in fact developed by British military officers stationed in India. So, it’s cultural appropriation and weirdness on MANY levels!
That said, it’s the only sport I’ve ever been any good at, so I’d be secretly pleased if it suddenly became a Popular White Thing.
Battledore and Shuttlecock was a game that was played across the Eurasian landmass for a long period of time (iirc, since the Roman/Han period, but I can’t find any citations to back that up at the moment), and then somebody in the nineteenth century added a tennis net and some rich white dude decided to name it after himself. Typical, although I guess that’s more Amerigo-ing that Columbusing.
In any case, here’s an early modern portrait of adorable little European child holding a racket and shuttlecock in a set of clothing I can promise you she never played in. http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/3…
ETA: Here’s a 19th century Japanese woodcut of a girl (also in clothes she probably doesn’t play in!) posing with a racket and shuttlecock http://www.metmuseum.org/collection/the-collectio…
Amerigo-ing is next level, for sure.
Interesting! Thanks for that!
Totally the only sport I’m any good at! I grew up playing it with my (not Asian) grandma for some reason. The random times we did badminton in PE at school were my shining moments of triumph.
Didn’t Susan Sarandon, of all people, try to make hipster badminton a thing a few years ago?
Correction, that was table tennis/ping pong
Dumb question: What’s wrong with drinking Mexican Coca-Cola? Unless the middle-class white people drinking it also claim to have brewed it themselves, why does it matter? (Maybe relevant: I live in a border state, so products like this aren’t uncommon here.)
I think it’s all the “Oh, you have to have Mexican Coca-Cola! It’s SOOOO much better than American Coca-Cola. It’s made with REAL sugar! Not that terrible high fructose corn syrup…” that goes along with drinking it. 🙂
Yeah I eyeroll so hard at this, not because of any cultural tensions but because anyone who thinks they can taste the difference ought to take a look at this bridge I happen to have for sale…
Wait, have you actually tried it? Because it tastes almost like a different soda flavor.
Yeah dude. Tastes like Coke.
Well, maybe your taste buds can’t pick up the distinct difference, but mine can. I can’t stand ‘American’ Coke, but am quite happy with ‘Mexican’ Coke.
We have it here too (not a border state). I think it’s just that middle-class white people act like they “discovered” it. That was definitely the feeling when it was introduced to me. “If you go over to the ‘Mexican’ aisle, you can find Coke with REAL sugar in it! Isn’t that WILD?!” Like it was some kind of crazy secret that only the really hip shoppers of the Kroger might be privy to. There’s nothing inherently wrong with drinking it or preferring it, but there’s just something kind of skeezy about acting like it’s something only the cool hipsters know about.
Oh, that makes sense. It only gets skeezy if the consumer makes a big, exoticizing performance out of it.
Speaking of Kroger, I actually had their bakery section in mind when I made my first comment. The Kroger near my house sells conchas. Sometimes I buy them; sometimes I buy blueberry bagels. I wondered if I was social justicing wrong on the days that I was tired of blueberries.
Besides, everyone knows the REAL secret of the Mexican aisle is that the canned goods are roughly half the price of the stuff in the “non-Mexican” aisles.
SO TRUE. I was very sad when my grocery store got wise to the fact that Goya brand coconut water was like half the price of Fancy Hipster Brand coconut water and hiked the price up to match.
My grocery has not yet cottoned on to the fact that the “Asian section” coconut juice (with pulp, even!) is still 99 cents whereas the non-pulp-having coconut beverage in the soft drink aisle is 2.50. Oh, I know it’s full of sugar, but it’s just so tasty and it fills the gap until I can get to the actual Asian market to get my hands on some in mass quantities.
I am horrified by the prices charged for/paid for coconut water, having consistently bought it for basically no money from the local Asian/Latino shops for years before it became a Thing.
(Does it make me, like, the über hipster if I am consistently grumbling that hipsters are ruining everything I like?)
Aw yeah, that is totally the bat signal of the über hipster. I’m in Austin and cannot tell you how many times I’ve heard: “this neighborhood was cool until the hipsters moved in” from an über hipster who moved in ~2-5 years earlier. I mean, I was born and raised here, but I neverrrr complain about incomers.
Ditto complaining about price adjustments. Stuff is getting more expensive because of demand. X is good, more people want X. It’s natural. If coconut water gets trendy, hop off it until the trend passes. Something else will be cool tomorrow. I get that this is a bigger problem with staples, so I’m not talking about those.
Also, coconuts are still cheap…. so if it’s really a thing, you can go straight to the source, so to speak.
Okay, sure, coconut water isn’t a staple so who cares what it costs, just stop drinking it if you can’t afford it. I get that, though it’s a little harsh to tell someone to just get over giving up something they enjoy. Never mind that coconuts aren’t actually cheap everywhere. What about kale? Collard greens? Other foods with cultural significance that are becoming more expensive because they’re trendy? It’s a little weird to tell people that they should just stop cooking/eating what they want if trends infringe on their ability to do so and also that they shouldn’t be annoyed about it.
Same goes for neighborhoods – I lived in a neighborhood I loved for several years until suddenly I couldn’t afford it anymore and had to move, because everyone else had discovered they loved it too. I don’t think it’s as simple as just not complaining about price increases when they directly impact your life.
Right, but if you moved into that neighborhood, you were part of that gentrifying wave, unless you came in and paid below market rate, which then more power to you. People who are moving in now are making the same choice that you were, just like people switching over to coconut juice or whatever other market driven choice people are making nowadays. Sure people are being affected, but just because you were an early adopter that doesn’t make you less culpable than this wave of adopters. It’s the same sweeping force.
My comment wasn’t geared towards someone who had a cultural attachment and was struggling to find a way to sustain that legacy, it was to someone who figured out that shopping at “Asian/Latino” markets was cheaper and was chapped that other people had figured out that reality to. It’s not harsh to be like, hey, how do you think that news spread? Did you think that you and your buddies were going to be the only ones to hop on that train? So yeah, if you switched to drinking something because you found a deal and then that deal dried up… it’s not unreasonable to find something new to drink.
When it comes to produce, yeah, I forget sometimes that it’s different outside the temperate zone. That’s on me.
It’s not that it’s all expensive – increased demand doesn’t seem to have driven up the prices on coconut water that’s marketed at the original major consumer base too much. It’s the creation of brands that a) jack up the price and present it to shoppers like that was always the price and b) make it as stripped of any connection to where they picked it up from that bothers me. It’s definitely a “look at this magical thing white people have ‘discovered'” item, along with quinoa and a bunch of foods (lots of greens) that, while the price bump doesn’t hurt me, have turned “thing that I eat because I have always eaten it” into “thing I must be eating because White Hipsterdom”. To go with examples of food that aren’t really subject to cultural appropriation, it’s like the sudden popularity of oatmeal because it’s got more fiber and protein than other cereals – it’s just a food, I’ve always eaten it, why are you people willing to pay so much for it and act like it’s a revelation?
Same with the spices. When I learned I could buy almost every spice for but 99 cents a bag I nearly cried.
The real REAL secret is that the Goya ginger beer has something like five times the ginger-y bite as anything else in the store, fancy hipster soft drinks included.
Which is why every bar pushing the stupid seal brand for ginger beer-based cocktails just sounds like “blandness” to me now.
The Jamaican brands are super spicy too. In my neighborhood we have a lot of “Good-O” brand soda and they make awesome ginger beer.
I can only drink the Goya ginger beer if I temper the bite with gin or bourbon.
This is true of ginger products in the UK as well; British ginger beer has a kick that throws most Americans for a loop.
Best “ethnic” food aisle moment – during Snowpocolypse/Snowmaggedon a few years ago, I was in Virginia, and we went to the store to make sure we had emergency candles for the anticipated upcoming power outage. The clerk claimed to be all out, but we were able to find shabbos candles and Saints’ candles in the aisle where they kept the Mexican and kosher foods (all one aisle, of course). The clerk didn’t even know they sold them.
Fellow border state dweller. I don’t think there’s anything wrong, because nobody here is acting like Mexican Coke is some sort of special, underground secret thing only we are privy to, and are sharing with the world.
And is it Columbusing if instead of drinking Mexican Coke, you drink Canadian Coke, which is also made with real sugar?
No, then it’s Hudsoning.
Or Jacques-Cartiering?
Maurice-Richard-ing
Ha! I have heard many a white person extol the virtues of Mexican Coke but never ever heard of this. Then again, I guess it’s not like our American supermarkets have a Canadian section.
I hate to break it to you, but I’m pretty sure Canadian Coke is not made with real sugar. The confusion might be because high fructose corn syrup is listed as “glucose-fructose” in ingredients lists here, because of some difference in labelling laws or something.
Coke’s ingredient list actually says “sugar/glucose-fructose.” So far as I understand, that means “sugar or high fructose corn syrup or a mixture of both, depending on what we felt like putting in this batch, but probably just high fructose corn syrup because it’s cheaper.”
47th paralleling
A soda I miss from when I lived in a border state: Manzana Lift. It’s a Mexican apple-flavoured soda. So good! I haven’t been able to find any Canadian/American apple flavoured sodas since moving up here to the Frozen North. 🙁
Apple Izze! It’s just ridiculously expensive for pop.
I just had the revelation that Lift, a juice-based soda I had all the time in Germany, is the same as Manzana Lift. Maybe it’s not the exact same recipe, but it seems to be the same product! Not that Germany is any closer for you than Mexico/border states…
Mexican Manzanita lift is not the same thing as German Lift, which is apple juice and fizzy water (and quite tasty). The Mexican ones are basically apple jolly ranchers in soda form (and also delicious, but in a completely different way).
German Lift is made by Coca-cola, and it bums me out that they don’t sell it in the US.
I am pretty sure I have seen this at Wal-Marts in the Midwest. Maybe not your preferred retail outlet, but still.
I’m in Canada 🙁
There is like half a dozen brands of apple pop in the HEBs in Austin. It’s delightful.
I just wanted to say I appreciate your user name. That is all.
Yeah I don’t get that, especially as Coke is the ur-American product and drinking Mexican-bottled Coke just gets you back the original recipe.
Stepping!
I feel like in the late 90s/early 00s there was a rush to include Stepping in like every family-oriented show on tv. Is there a Black character? Then we gotta have Stepping! Also a few movies? Maybe it’s more of a thing where these episodes stand out as especially Of The Time due to the clothes and remembering this brief rush of focus on the activity, and there weren’t so many as all that. Kind of like how there was a brief period when everything was all about fancy jump roping, and there was even a Disney Channel Original Movie and sequel about double-dutch dancing.
But either way, Stepping looked really cool, and I loved seeing it when they came on tv.
But what is Stepping?? Like Step Aerobics? Help!
The best I can do is to link you to one of the performances that Sister Sister had: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WeAaqh-hOxI
It’s a dance thing. It has elements of tap but also hip-hop and line dancing? I am white so have no business explaining it, because all I know is what I saw on tv 15 years ago.
I think there may have been some touring show that incorporated Stepping also with lots of percussion using trash bins and stuff, too? Or were those different things? idek… they were around the same time, though.
I’m pretty sure Michael Flatley did that exact choreography in one of his “Riverdance” spinoffs.
Yea, I want to know what it is … it kind of sounds fun?
It’s a type of performance! In addition to what I mentioned in another comment (typed while you posted), the depictions I’ve seen (granted, like 15 years ago) were organized teams and used a steady beat to organize their movements, and the beat was created by shoe taps or clapping or snapping or just stepping up and down – there was a call-and-response element, too, that played into the performances.
It really is cool, and I honestly hope that someone who does know about it can school me on what I’m getting wrong, because now that I’m older and more aware, I’d like to know more about where it came from and everything.
If you want to see a ridiculous movie about stepping, check out Stomp the Yard. It’s kind of a Drumline/Step Up movie about steppers at a southern university.
Unfortunately they film the dance scenes really jerkily and incompletely, like bad Baz Luhrmann. But! the wrong-side-of-the-tracks kid studies math SO HARD and also his love interest is his math tutor. Maybe physics tutor. More like this plz.
Look up “step squad” and any of the Divine Nine on youtube to find something, like this: http://youtu.be/_Vc2i4YyAII?t=1m23s
ETA: this video is much more to the point! http://youtu.be/9TnRRrG6Dlg
I think Step itself was just really big in the late 90s/early 00s. At least near me, a lot of high schools (including mine) had Step teams.
It’s a pain to try to google to figure out what other shows featured it, so I can get more than the blurry Sister Sister ones I did find (and which were the most recent reruns I’d seen with it). :/
Yep, my Midwestern public high school had a step team during that era. It was fun to watch them practice, and you could always hear from across the building when they were doing so.
I’m starting to wonder if stepping got columbused in the late 90s and early 00s? I’ve always thought of it as the realm of black greek societies. My husband remembers going to step shows as a young kid (well before the late 90s) and being really enamored with Omega Psi Phi as a result, ha.
Looking at Wikipedia, it was started by black fraternities and sororities in the early 1900s. However, I don’t think you could say it was columbused, since, at least at my school and around me, the step teams were made up of mostly black women.
That makes sense–I was just really struck by the responses of “it got big in the late 90s/early 00s” and wondered what that was about.
Oh! I just thought it was a little more visible in the mainstream during that time – STOMP started in 1992, which was the first nationally syndicated stepping contest, and it was featured in Drumline and a lot of TV shows.
Rick Owens, in 2013, replaced his models with step teams which might count as a partial-Columbus?
I would really like to try Stepping. Is it ok if I don’t pretend I discovered it?
I legitimately had never thought of historical badminton in any way other than very upper-crust 1910-era ladies gently swatting a shuttlecock while gracefully holding up their skirts. My bad, I guess…
I used to play it with my grandmother in the 80s. This was done rather than teach me tennis (which she was astoundingly good at), because I was clumsy and probably would have knocked someone unconscious. Yes, I was aware of this reason as a child. No, I did not argue. Birdies hurt a lot less.
Anyway, I also associate it with upper-crust ladies from the turn of the century, because that was what my grandmother was trying to emulate.
Don’t ever read wedding forums for people with a “we are so Cultured” bent because the number of people with “I’m having a Chinese-themed wedding because I just feel really connected to their culture and like, zen” will blow your mind. See also: chains of paper cranes to create a chuppah for the wedding of two non-Asian non-Jewish people. And so on.
I swear upon everything wedding, if I ever hear anyone I know say the name of a nationality/ethnicity/culture followed by “theme”, nobody will be able to find the body.
You can google pretty much any ethnicity and find some white couple happily celebrating their “X-themed wedding.” Fill in the blanks. It’s the worst Google game ever.
I think I won’t, honestly. I have enough people on my “To murderate” list that I know in person.
omg gross those sound horrid!
I had to google “paper crane chuppah” out of curiosity about how it works (for the record, the cranes hang down from the sides like bead curtains, they do not form the canopy itself). This embarrassed me enough to make me use Chrome’s incognito tab feature. Also, the first page of image results FOR THAT SPECIFIC PHRASE has white people wedding photos incorporating yet MORE cultures, collect em all I guess.
Ugh, the paper crane thing, tho. That’s extra weird to me since I strongly associate paper cranes with the the story about the Japanese girl dying from radiation poisoning and the futile fight for world peace.
See also House Hunters International, especially the ones where someone is so devoted to living in the Real Paris or Authentic Florence or True Tokyo but lose their shit when taken to anything not typically-American and end up in an American-style apartment with posters of French films/mini prints of pasta/non-paper origami dust magnets.
this is hilarious but badminton seems kind of off to me? I’ve always associated it with WASP culture since where I’m from, it has such a “garden party”/”English sport” connotation. Also, it’s been a staple of East Coast summer BBQ since I was a child, and badminton is a required part of middle/high school gym in the state I was raised. Maybe this is like an east coast/west coast divide thing? Because if anything ball badminton was colonized by the English and turned into today’s badminton sometime in the 1700s, not exactly something that’s going to happen soon….
I’m getting the impression from the other comments that badminton is only a waspy thing in the South? idk tho. It’s so fun.
I live in the PNW and have always felt like it was kind of a WASPy sport too.
My Dad lived to play badminton in our backyard back in the 70’s. He was a truck driver and a Teamster and drank Miller High Life with no possibility of irony. Just saying.
I grew up in Connecticut and we played badminton every year in gym, and I remember a lot of backyard badminton going on in the 90s.
This is what hipsters have done to my beloved breakfast tacos. First, they take something that you can buy at any time of the day or night for 99 cents and mark it up 150%, serve it in a space with exposed beams, and claim that they are selling “autentico” street tacos.
Fucking Austin, man. They take a thing. They act like they invented the thing. Then they charge you double and act like you should be grateful you have been introduced to something as rare and exquisite as a bean and cheese taco.
(and half the time they use a fucking Sysco tortilla!)
Seconded! That said, I did have a visiting professor from Canada who came into class on day and said: “Sorry I am late to class… but like I just found out you can get these at the student union, and there’s only 99 cents and they have eggs and bacon!” She was holding up a bag of breakfast tacos and the expression on her face was priceless. It felt like that scene from the Little Mermaid with the forks.
Oh man, that’s hilarious and charming! And I want people to discover breakfast tacos, because they’re one of God’s perfect foods. Everyone should eat tacos.
I just get irrationally angry when a certain type of white person acts like they are an urban foodie explorer because they ate carne asada tacos from a truck at 2am when the bar closed.
There’s a reason that truck is there. It’s because this is South Texas and EVERYONE LIKES TACOS.
Plus there’s the whole taking what for lack of a better term can be described as “poor people food” and fetishizing it and charging a ridiculous price for it, then expecting a pat on the back.
I’m sure in other parts of the country there are pervasively available ethnic foods that have had the same thing happen to them. Like ramen, or dumplings or whatever. Here it just happens to be tacos/Tex Mex in general.
That is now happening with brisket, which used to be one of the cheaper cuts of meat that you could feed a lot of people with. But then the foodies discovered Texas barbecue. So.
There is, no joke, a Brisket Bandit here in San Antonio who has been stealing hundreds of pounds of briskets from local bbq places, solely because the price of brisket has gotten so high. He stole nearly three grand worth from my favorite place. It’s out of control.
Ohhhh my god, I am now fervently hoping that he’s stealing it to give to poor people, thus making him the ROBIN HOOD OF BRISKET.
Oh shit, that happened in Austin too, except it was from the HEB on 7th and then selling to nearby restaurants. I think? It was a few years ago now.
Oh god is that why it’s gotten more expensive? It’s always been my family’s go-to for pot roast, which is not supposed to be an expensive meal.
::nods:: Grappa.
Listen, I’m Canadian, and I would really like to discover some 99c breakfast tacos this morning.
Dude, you are totally welcome to! I taught my roommate how to make chilaquiles and she hasn’t stopped thanking me yet. I’m like the cultural exchange queen. That said, you may have to be the change you wish to see in the world if there aren’t any breakfast taco vendors near you. Good news is though that they are incredibly easy to make. If you can scramble an egg you are 99% of the way there.
Oh my god
Brother!
Austin had me thinking I was crazy with its bullshit hyped up breakfast tacos
I am infamous for my ranting about Austin tacos. Down with $4.99 gringo tacos!
I mean, there are some good tacos here! I’m not going to say they’re better than SA tacos because I’m not a crazy person, but there are plenty of delicious cheap tacos to be found. Just leave the $4.99 gringo tacos to the gringos.
Holy crap– A SA Toastie??? ME TOO!!!
I’ve totally tried those beauty masks, but I live near a Korean makeup and skin care store…
I order the My Beauty Diary ones off Amazon. They’re the shit, and you get a ton of them for the price. The ones at Sephora you can only buy as singles and they are stupid expensive.
Yes, I’ve used those masks since being introduced to them in S. Korea. But I didn’t realize that they were a “secret”? Maybe this is because I tend to assume I know less about makeup than other ladies so I think I just thought they were new to me and everyone I knew had probably been doing them or something like them for years.
Sheet masks are totally a thing here in Vancouver.
Sephora already Columbused sheet masks. (They are great, I use them a lot, but I also am beauty-stupid and have no idea how to research which Asian beauty brands I should be looking for instead. Help accepted.)
http://www.sephora.com/face-mask-P392104?skuId=15…
My friend went to Korea and brought some back. I haven’t used them yet though.
Try My Beauty Diary – i get them off Amazon. My favorite is the sake yeast.
I love these, too, especially when the weather is cold and my face is flakin to bits. If you don’t have a Korean beauty store you can drive to and support your awesome local business, amzn has lots, and memebox makes a gel (rather than paper) version that is next-fuckin-level. #straightupcolumbusing
I’ve been ordering from the SokoGlam site – the hydrogels are normally $6 but you can get normal sheet masks for about half that.
Most of the “face masks” sold here in the Netherlands are the sheet kind, which sort of baffled me at first but then I just accepted as that’s what you get at the Etos. Maybe they’re imports?
I like the Innisfree ones, especially cucumber, but My Beauty Diary are nice too!
After watching a clip of the Stevie Wonder tribute I’m wondering about the Happy Birthday song. It’s approx. 9 million times better than the regular Happy Birthday, after all.
I fear that white people are going to Columbus Columbus’ing.
Welp, the cotton beauty masks are already happening.
Clapback is definitely going to be on the list soon. White people will be mildly disagreeing about something and they will talk about reading and dragging and all.
I have definitely already heard white people (British, no less, which somehow made it worse) trying to drag and read each other about six months ago. It was awful.
There are way less truly original white-US-born-n-raised things than things that have already been culturally appr’d (appropriated/appreciated) at some point.
100% Agree. I’m all for being enthusiastic about food. That’s why i love cooking and eating. I’m even happy to have a conversation about where to get good tacos, except that always turns into some pissing match about who can be the most “authentic” whatever that means. But it’s the self-congratulation that makes me livid.
And semi-related but I cannot stand it when people dump on texmex. It’s its own damn genre of food. There’s tasty and less tasty texmex and maybe there are some dishes a person might not like. Also, there’s a ton of cheese, I get that. But people who turn their noses up always strike me as those same urban foodie explorers who are then going to tell me about that one bowl of menudo they had under a harvest moon in a field or something. They only care if it’s “real” however they define it. Not if it’s good, ya know?
Add class stuff in the mix and it just gets out of control. Which is sad because I love sharing food with people too. Learning new recipes, all of that stuff. it’s just complicated.
I bought Lisa Fain’s “Homesick Texan” cookbook on a whim (having not ever really eaten Tex-Mex, just what I can get as Mexican food up north) and OH LORD there is some serious good food in that book.
I’ve heard such good things about that book! I just went over to check out the blog and now I am drooling.
I married a Hill Country Texan of German/Czech extraction. My mother-in-law is keeping us in Lisa Fain’s books, along with cookie cutters shaped like the state of Texas and the Alamo, mugs festooned with bluebonnets, jar after jar of Gebhart’s chili powder, and the like. I think she’s worried that her son is going to lose his Texanity up here in the frozen North.
They are some damn good cookbooks, let me tell you.
Oh my gosh, you have the best mother-in-law! I do not have any of the above items, but if I ever left Texas for good, I sure as hell would stock up.
Also, I love the Hill Country Texas Germans/Czechs. I’m on the Hispanic side of Texas equation, but I will never drive through West, Texas without stopping at the Czech Stop. It’s gotten to the point where it’s basically a superstition.
Oh man, I love her. Her recipes are legit. I’ve turned to her for help with things like chess pie that weren’t part of my cultural repertoire growing up. And her recipes for stuff like chili gravy for enchiladas are excellent and authentic.
Lisa Fain’s carintas were the first elaborate meal I cooked after returning to the US West after two years in Germany. They are to DIE for, and my cousins who live in Hermosillo use her recipe now.
I have both her books and I simply adore them, but my favorite recipe of hers is her DIY version of Ranch Style Beans. http://www.homesicktexan.com/2010/03/ranch-style-…
Her Houston-style carnitas are one of my top favorite foods. I always make a giant pot so I can have enough left to make green chile stew. So good.
Yup. Those are them. My cousins had never heard of cooking the meat in lime and orange juice but they were excited from the moment I mentioned them, and now that’s how they make them. They also loved the explanation (from Smitten Kitchen) that “the meat is taking a margarita bath.”
Oooh girl. Don’t get me started on the whole Mexican vs Tex Mex bs. No, it is not Mexican food. It’s a culturally and locationally specific regional food style. If you don’t like it, that’s cool, but to claim that it’s not authentic is absurd. And it’s not trying to be Pueblan or Oaxacan or whatever. It’s Tex Mex. It’s sui generis. They can literally trace the origin of what we understand as chili con carne to the women who sold it on the street in San Antonio in the 1880s. Anyone who tells me that’s not “authentic” can go eat a stale tortilla.
Agreed compltely with regards to Tex-Mex/Ameri-mex in general being authentic ethnic food. Those big “Mission Burritos” that Chipotle has so successfully Columbused were supposedly invented by central valley farmworkers looking for a cheap, portable food. I dunno how much more authentic you can get than that.
For what it’s worth, Rick Bayless and Gustavo Aurellano both argue that Ameri-Mex should be thought of as a regional variety of Mexican food. Rick Bayless even points to two regions of Ameri-Mex, a Texas style and a California-Arizona style. (I’d personally add New Mexican food as a third variation.)
Yeah, I have two close friends: one from Southern California and one from New Mexico, and it’s amazing how different but still familiar some of the dishes are. Like, I’m a total convert on the New Mexican palate of chiles and have to be honest even though it hurts my Texas pride that Californian fish tacos are on another level. Also we argue all the time about what’s called what. Good-naturedly, but still.
I live in and am from N. CA, and lived in Tucson for a long time, and there’s differences even between those two places. I’m sure you and your friends snipe about what place makes the best Tortillas.
Oh there is no argument because I know that one in my heart of hearts. 😉
As do I.
Related funny story: A few years ago the Tucson alt-weekly did one of those “Best of Tucson” contests, and the actual winner by votes for “Best Tortilla” was “My Grandma”.
There’s what I like to call the Green Chili Zone, which starts somewhere west of Del Rio, Texas and heads off towards New Mexico. Like, here in San Antonio, the #1 plate is a beef taco and a cheese enchilada. In Marfa, where I spend some time, the #1 is a stacked enchilada with a white sauce studded with green chilis, and a chile relleno. My heart belongs to the cheese enchilada made with a red tortilla, yellow cheese, and chili gravy, but the others are obviously delicious too.
Oh man, yeah, the first time I went to New Mexico, my mother actually warned me before I left that they were going to serve stacked enchiladas, like I was going to freak out or something, and then the first place I went served them rolled and I was hugely disappointed because I had girded my loins for a stack.
When I lived in the Bay Area I’d get super distracted when I read a typical Yelp review by a self-appointed expert asshole “I lived in Germany for 5 years and can tell you the glassware at this bar is not authentic” – I loved to open up these people’s profiles and watch them out themselves as compulsive liars as they professed expertise in yknow, Sicilian cooking, soul food, Korean street food, and Czech lunch carts or such. What you are, sir, is an expert in appropriating for the sake of your own pretentiousness.
75% of all Bay Area yelp reviews are in this vein.
That statement is extra ridiculous since most German bars get their glassware very cheaply from the brewer/distributor as a marketing/advertising method.
I’m sorry to see that so many people are racist against Vikings. This should really be known as “Eriksoning.”
It’s all because of the Red scare.
Guess who was one of the ONLY people to attend the Olympic badminton events when the Olympics were in Atlanta in 1996? This gal.
Oh, the one sheet beauty masks are already here. Have been for a while, actually.
These seem really practical.
So practical that they were in common use in my bit of the southwestern US in the 1970s. They had no cachet. Just an ordinary part of ordinary face routine.
KAKAOTALK. I need to shout out KakaoTalk. Thank you ex-bf for living in Korea for 3 years–how did I get by without being able to text a dog throwing a cellphone or exploding in angry flames?
(but yes to the rest, I’ve been trying to have a conversation with my mom about how her Chinese New Year celebration (at her Catholic grammar school) are kiiiiiinda iffy)
No word of a lie I know someone who was a bridesmaid in an ‘Indian’ wedding of two non Indian people. They were all wearing saris and fake noserings and oh god it was terrible. I’ve also been asked ‘where I got that cute candle holder, that’s really the look I’m going for.’ I was completely non-plussed until I realised she was referring to the menorah that used to be belong to my great grandfather.
Didn’t a white sorority win a national stepping contest a year or two ago?
One of the many reasons Android is better than iOS is the emojis are way more expressive (at least as of like Android 4.1 or so).
A lot of these comments (Mexican Coke, Tex Mex, badminton) seem to be of the “but wait I grew up doing that” or “that’s available in my local grocery store.”
This is an aspect of American social justice I’ve always found confusing, because historically speaking, cultural exchange (e.g. “appropriation”) is more the norm than anything. It is beyond normal, it is what happens every single time two or more cultures come into contact with each other. It’s how Buddhism ended up in China.
That said, having an “Indian-themed” (or any “themed” wedding like that with traditions that are not your own) is just a jerk move.
It’s not just doing the thing, it’s doing the thing with an aspect of “I FOUND THIS THING that these backwards brown people were doing and made it awesome!”
I don’t disagree, I just think this article lumps in “things that are natural products of long-term intercultural exchange” (badminton, produced and modified over time by what seems to be the entire continent of Eurasia) with “I FOUND THIS THING five minutes ago and made it awesome” (white people with “Indian” weddings).
There’s a difference between exchange and appropriation, though, just as there is a difference between appreciation and appropriation. Appropriation is taking all of the “cool” parts of something and completely ignoring the background and meaning of something, and acting as though you discovered/invented it.
Seems to me there’s a big confusing space where one person means to be respectful by not pretending to have the original cultural meaning, and another person finds that trivializing and therefore insulting.
Yeah, there’s an aspect of all the talk of Columbusing that is sort of disturbing to me, that seems to imply that it’s always wrong or offensive to just enjoy something from another culture. And that just seems kind of fucked up. I am 100% on board with not being insensitive or appropriative and that is something we all need to interrogate ourselves about on the regular, as far as I’m concerned. But cultural exchange is not a bad thing. If we’re limiting ourselves to only partaking of the things that come from our own particular cultural background, that sounds pretty boring and borderline xenophobic to me.
Totally! i could absolutely not agree more.
But if we don’t make fun of hipsters, how will we make ourselves feel like we’re better (more culturally aware and enlightened or whatever)?
Yeah, I’m tired of this one upmanship. It seems like people are trying to find examples of Columbusing where it’s a stretch, for their own self-validation or something (“I’m better than these people because I don’t do this thing!”). This sort of thing really makes me not want to be part of a lot of social justice scenes. I consider myself part of social justice movements, but some circles are not any better than the hipsters they purport to mock.
More recent food Columbus-ing have been coconut water, bahn mi, and ramen.
Now I want a bahn mi. I haven’t seen any new hipster bahn mi places here. The one I go to is across the street from my bus stop and is just a small place run by an elderly couple. They don’t charge enough. And they make their own mayonnaise from scratch.
Coconut water has to be a prank, though. A drink that tastes like the back of one’s throat? And I can pay $5 for it?
Guys the Facebook comments on this post are. . .Facebook.
Oh ew. I read this, checked the Toast FB page, saw I somehow hadn’t already liked it, fixed that, read the comments, and immediately reconsidered the move. The Toast (the website, anyway) has been such a valuable safe haven from the general inanity and awfulness of the internet (thanks, comment moderators!). I don’t need FB comments screwing that up.
Sometimes I kind of enjoy the Facebook comments, like when Mallory makes fun of them in the weekly Toast Points. It’s like we get the benefits of an awesome and smart comment section here, but we still get to make fun of idiots. Damn if these ones didn’t get my blood pressure up though. “SO WE’RE NOT ALLOWED TO BUY ANY PRODUCTS? THAT’S DEFINITELY EXACTLY WHAT YOU’RE SAYING!”
Have they devolved into YouTube yet?
When they come for stepping…..I swear to God.
Wait, I grew up in an Asian immigrant community? We played badminton at my middle school all the time! My family has a net!
(I'm from the Midwest, which is consistent with floridagal's association. My area has a large Middle Eastern immigrant population, but Eric Fisher's 2000 census maps make it look pretty unlikely that I grew up in an Asian immigrant community without noticing it, although there's maybe a slightly higher concentration of Asian-identified families in my neighborhood than in surrounding ones.)
Hooray for middle age…(she said, wearily).
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