Selena Gomez’s big, sexy, post-breakup, post-Breakers performance at the MTV Movie Awards last weekend was practically perfect. The new single, “Come and Get It,” sounds like a hit. On Twitter, Britney Spears called her live performance “incredible.” There was just one, tiny flaw, and it glittered between her perfect eyebrows.
“The bindi on the forehead is an ancient tradition in Hinduism and has religious significance,” president of the Universal Society of Hinduism Rajan Zed told WENN. He explained that the “auspicious religious symbol,” traditionally worn by married women at the site of the sixth chakra, should not be “thrown around loosely” or for consumer fashion. “Selena should apologize and then she should get acquainted with the basics of world religions,” he said.
Although Gomez, who described her new look as — yikes — “glam tribal” is the first pop star whose bindi elicited demands for an apology, she’s hardly the first to have worn one, to varying and often hilarious degrees of offense. Even Gwen Stefani, the original white girl with a bindi, took some heat in the zines for what some called her “cultural colonialism.” Click through for a tour of celebrity misappropriation, rated by their offensiveness.
Read more posts by Kat Stoeffel
Filed Under:
love and war
,fame
,selena gomez
,cultural appropriation
,bindis
,other people's fashions