Safa means tranquil, serene, calm…I try

I don’t understand…well yes I do to an extent. I’m sure most of us can appreciate certain aspects/practices of another’s culture. For example, I am a HUGE fan of a lot of english/british culture…especially the humor and certain phrasings. You may even hear me say “I need to go on holiday”, or when a friend or someone is giving me a hard a time or trying to pull one over on me, I might be heard saying, “are you serious or just taking the piss?”. You may even hear me refer to the chinese resturaunt as the “chinese take-away”. Oh, and “bloody this, that and the other” are now all part of my daily vernacular. This is probably as far as I go.

At what point are you teetering on the ridiculous and bordering on being offensive? Some people felt the B-Boy style out of NYC was totally jacked by asian youth. Some people just see this as a form of flattery. I see this having started as a form of flattery but now it’s spawned it’s owm sub-culture.

A lot of people (myself and friends included) thought it quite ridiculous when we used to see white people with locs. Even though I still feel it looks nasty and unkempt, I assume now it’s not so much imitation as them actually embracing the rastafari movement/religion.

Now, what I saw last night - aside from being the inspiration behind this post, was a bowl of hot, offensive, nasty, ridiculous, taking-it-to-the-extreme, messatation of all. Talk about jacking someone’s culture….

I’m at the supermarkert standing in line. I casually look back and 2 people behind me is a father/daughter. The little girl is about 5, cute as a button. They were white…it’s relevant for me to add this as it relates to cultures. The dad, at first glance looked like the typical 25-30 year-old suburban DC dad….La.nds End parka, D.ockers, etc….

BOY WAS I MAKING A GENERALIZATION. Something caught my eye and I had to do a double take. Y’all, this is what I saw: Now let me say, I did not speak to this man and don’t know WHY he did this. There may be some movement that I don’t yet know about but for a western white male do do this….please someone tell me what I’m missing. I’m guessing it’s just aesthetics. I’m sure people thought I looked crazy when I had my eyebrow pierced in my 20s. I guess I’m just imagining what teachers and the like say about this girl’s dad when he shows up for conferences. I wonder will she be embarrased when she gets older.

I think I would have a different reaction if this was something indigenous to this part of the world or even to men. Of course one of you will have a few examples of this having happened somewhere else and I know I may come off as closed minded but so what…it’s my blog…….

Imagine this earlobe, only but larger AND ON A MAN…He looked looked like he had 2 silver and blue boiled eggs as earlobes. Oh let me be clear. The guy wasn’t just wearing large earrings…his earlobes had been stretched to that size….like we used to see on Nationa.l Grap.hic back in the day.