“Why the cassock? "For me" – he smiles – "It is a work uniform. It is intended to be a sign for those who meet me, and above all for those who do not believe. In this way I am recognizable as a priest, always. In this way on the streets I take advantage of every opportunity to make friends. Father, someone asks me, where is the post office? Come on, I'll go with you, I reply, and meanwhile we talk, and I discover that the children of that man are not baptized. Bring them to me, I say in the end; and I often baptize them later. I seek in every way to show with my face a good humanity. Just the other day" – he laughs – "in a cafe an old man asked me which horses he should bet on. I gave him the horses. I asked the Blessed Mother for forgiveness: but you know, I said to her, it is to befriend this man. As a priest who was one of my teachers used to tell those who asked him how to convert the Marxists: 'One has to become their friend,' he would reply.”
—From an interview with Fr. Michel-Marie, an extraordinary priest in MarseilleHello Daisy, Just a thought on the turban you're thinking of buying. Just because you think they look good doesn't mean you should wear them. They actually serve a religious purpose not something to make you look fashionable. This is cultural appropriation and has the same equation of wearing a burka. Its highly offensive to people.
I appreciate that some people wear turbans very seriously and that they are deeply significant within certain cultures and religions; however I disagree that my personal choice to wear a ‘fashion turban’ (which has a marked difference in appearance to a ‘religious turban’, if you actually compare photographs of the two styles of headwear) is an offensive one.
The issue of cultural appropriation is a difficult one for sure, however as a young person living within the multicultural society that is Australia, I see ‘borrowing’ from other cultures and religions around me every day, and I see this as a beautiful thing. I understand that as a white person, to simply take something from a minority culture and claim it as one’s own without any acknowledgement is pretty revolting - however I do not see a piece of headgear that looks, to me, practically nothing like the cultural image of a turban as something that could be considered highly offensive.
It all depends on context; I would never wear religious or traditional dress to make fun of or mimic a people, and, as an exaggerated example, I would never be so disrespectful as to walk into a Sikh temple wearing my studded, fashion-punked-out version of a turban!
Opinion, anon? Am I just some privileged white girl talking smack, or is there actually some merit to what I’m saying? x
