Henna vs Depression & Anxiety
I had discovered the art of Henna, a paste made of a certain root to draw beautiful designs on your body (mostly hands and feet and stuff) but I've noticed that a lot of people say it's cultural appropriation to use it. I really like using it because it calms me down from anxiety attacks and helps me cope with depression a little better so it can keep my mind off of stuff. What do you guys think? Is it okay to keep using it? I don't want to offend anyone and I'm scared to continue using it.
Henna is quite popular in the belly dancing sceen in my country. Providing the materials used, there should be no issues in using henna. If it helps you through hard times then it will be fine =)
Hi OceanMermaid,
My personal stance on these things tends to be that it's necessary to weigh your reasons for doing a thing against the potential offense/problems that doing the thing might cause. For example, on the more extreme end of the spectrum, if you were talking about wearing blackface to make yourself feel better, you would want to weigh that against the extremely large number of people of colour who would find that extremely offensive. And on the other side of the spectrum, there was a kerfuffle a while back about people wearing traditional Palestinian scarves as fashion items, and in that case you would definitely want to refrain from it because a fashion item is definitely not worth offending people.
Your situation is much less extreme than either of those. You're doing a slightly controversial thing that helps you a fair amount. My personal stance would be that it's fine.
"if you were talking about wearing blackface to make yourself feel better"
Because black face WAS MADE to make fun of black people, it is litteraly the one and only reason behind it and it depicts stereotypes, Henna on the other hand is available WORLDWIDE and is even made for you BY Indians, sold online by Indians, they are WILLINGLY letting people use it, because theres nothing mocking about appreciating the beautiful decoration of your hands, Henna was used during Ancient egypt for decorative purpouses, Cleopatra used it for beauty rituals.
You can't compare a mocking black face to a beauty tradition as Henna wtf...
Henna is quite a popular form of body art which many poeople make use of to beautify themselves,.if it makes you feel good using it then by all means you should do hat feels good for you. i believe it can be a really great way to not only beautify yourself but also expressess your emotions in a positive way.