I’m well aware of the back story. My issue is that the photographer, Murad Osmann, is using a white women to represent Indian fashion. The women featured above is, Natalia Zakharova, Russian model in his #takemeto project. Both of them travel the world in many different countries with her appropriating all sorts of cultures by wearing their traditional clothing. He’s allowing her to appropriate Indian culture in this photo set to attempt art. It isn’t working because it’s not okay, it’s disrespectful. Indian culture (or any culture) isn’t a prop, you can’t just choose what parts of a culture you want or don’t want. I know when people travel to a different country they want to experience all of what the country has to offer including their fashion. However, you should do so appropriately. Above all, my biggest issue is that a photo set like this gets a lot of attention because it’s some white girl representing a culture that isn’t hers. She’s getting recognized for something that many South Asian women have had to fight for.
Also, Harpers Bazaar Bride is a magazine for Indian fashion. For the new issue of Harper’s Bazaar Bride India, they commissioned Murad to shoot bridal outfit photos at the historic sites and daily happenings of India with this model/his fiancé. I’m disappointed because there are so many young Indian girls that look through these photos in magazines and only see pretty designs on a white girl. That’s not a good representation of Indian beauty because that leaves many South Asian girls feeling unattractive for having a darker complexion. Which leads to a lot of psychological issues and that’s the reason why many young girls try to resort to bleaching their skin and other harmful procedures to attempt this fake beauty standard presented to them in magazines such as this set.
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