Gwen Stefani responds to accusations of cultural appropriation: 'These rules are just dividing us more and more'
- Gwen Stefani defended the Harajuku Girls era of her music career.
- She told Paper Magazine that people from different cultures must be able to share with one another.
- Stefani has often been accused of appropriating Japanese culture.
Gwen Stefani has once again pushed back against accusations of cultural appropriation and defended her association with the Japanese American dance group the Harajuku Girls.
During a new interview with Paper Magazine, Stefani, 51, said she believed people from different cultures must be allowed to share and learn from one another.
"If we didn't buy and sell and trade our cultures in, we wouldn't have so much beauty, you know?" she said. "We learn from each other, we share from each other, we grow from each other. And all these rules are just dividing us more and more."
She added: "I think that we grew up in a time where we didn't have so many rules. We didn't have to follow a narrative that was being edited for us through social media, we just had so much more freedom."
Stefani has dismissed accusations of cultural appropriation since her debut album, "Love. Angel. Music. Baby.," which was heavily influenced by contemporary Japanese culture. For much of the album's press and tour appearances, she was accompanied by the Harajuku Girls and was often seen in clothes inspired by Japanese street style.
Shortly after the album was released, the actor and comedian Margaret Cho wrote an essay in which she described Stefani's relationship with the Harajuku Girls as a "minstrel show" that reinforced negative stereotypes about Asian women.
But the singer has always maintained that her music is a display of admiration for Japanese culture rather than appropriation.
Stefani told Paper that her "deep fascination" with Japan and Japanese culture began as a child. She said her father worked for the Japanese company Yamaha and would often travel to the country and bring home toys and tell her stories about the fashionable Harajuku district in Tokyo.
Later during the interview, she described performing in Japan in 1996 with her former band No Doubt as "a pretty big deal." She then continued to recall the origins of her association with the Harajuku Girls, which she said came from a desire to have "a posse of girls" that she didn't have during her time in No Doubt.
"I never got to have dancers with No Doubt. I never got to change costumes. I never got to do all of those fun girl things that I always love to do," she said. "So I had this idea that I would have a posse of girls - because I never got to hang with girls - and they would be Japanese, Harajuku girls because those are the girls that I love. Those are my homies. That's where I would be if I had my dream come true, I could go live there and I could go hang out in Harajuku."
This isn't the first time Stefani has pushed back against criticism of her relationship with Japanese culture. While speaking with Billboard in 2019, she said: "I get a little defensive when people [call it cultural appropriation], because if we didn't allow each other to share our cultures, what would we be?
"You take pride in your culture and have traditions, and then you share them for new things to be created."