Kim Kardashian West really doesn’t care if she’s politically correct.
The celebrity entrepreneur got in trouble for wearing braids last summer.
She even received a letter from the mayor of Kyoto last month after she inexplicably named her new line of shapewear, “Kimono.” Following that latter backlash, she prudently promised to change the name.
Claiming a trademark on the ancient name for traditional Japanese garment for your knock-off Spanx was definitely not cool.
But now, she’s getting in trouble for referencing Hawaiian culture in her makeup palette.
West’s new eye shadow palette, “Sooo Fire” (which sounds like it was named after a comment someone once left on one of her Instagram photos) includes not just the innocuous “Fire” and “Lava” shades, but also “Kilauea” and “Pele’s Curse.”
Kīlauea is an active volcano in the Hawaiian Islands, and Pele is the goddess of volcanoes and fire in Hawaiian mythology. Ironically, her curse is that bad luck will follow anyone who takes native Hawaiian materials, such as sand or pumice, and brings them off the island.
First KKW makes a solutionwear and names it Kimono, disrespecting the Japanese people and culture. NOW she made an eye shadow palette using the name of a sacred place to Native Hawaiians and an akua to promote her “fire” collection?!?! SO HEWA! Shame on you @KimKardashian pic.twitter.com/BwgjbXhPz8
— Nalei (@estahkerr) July 22, 2019
It makes her look like she has no respect for anyone. This is the SECOND time she’s done this. She should’ve taken the same amount of time that she took to produce this product to learn about the Hawaiian culture. She doesn’t have any connection to Kīlauea or Pele. Its nonsense.
— Nalei (@estahkerr) July 23, 2019
The rumblings of backlash aren’t too much bad luck for West, who has a net worth of $370 million and will probably make bank off her eye shadow palette anyway. But the response to her product brings up an interesting point on the line between cultural sharing and appropriation.
Claiming the word “kimono” for a product that is wildly different from one is a bad idea, and it’s disrespectful to the culture from which the word originated. But making your painfully millennial eye shadow palette a little interesting by throwing in some multicultural flair is not.
Thanks to West, people who had never heard of Kīlauea or Pele (like me) will now have the chance to learn about the history of another culture. So far, there’s been no outrage from Iceland on another shade, “Crater of Hekla,” named for one of the country’s most active volcanoes.
The great thing about living in 21st-century America is that we constantly swap names and ideas and stories and nothing should be off-limits unless it’s truly offensive. Naming eye shadow after a Hawaiian goddess should be no more distasteful than naming it after the Greek god Hephaestus, who, while also a deity associated with fire, has a sadly less sexy name.
Whether or not West feels compelled to backtrack on her makeup names — and she likely will not, as she defended her decision to wear Fulani braids, despite critics who said white women shouldn’t wear black hairstyles — she shouldn’t have to apologize for referencing other cultures than her own.
