Is there Cultural Appropriation everywhere, from Utah to Eurovision? I don't think so.

Israel's Netta has won Eurovision with her great song Toy. But this victory was not without controversy: as you see, she dressed in an Asian-styled costume, and her stage was decorated with Asian items. This has predictably caused some people to cry 'cultural appropriation'.

This also brings to mind a recent unrelated story from Utah, USA, where a girl who wore a Chinese-style prom dress provoked a national discussion. In both cases, none of the Asians I know were offended: most were simply bewildered.

You see, the reason why cultural appropriation is considered bad is because comedians in the US and UK used to do blackface, where they would paint their faces black and act in ways that were demeaning to black people and black culture. I can understand why black people are very offended by anything similar to blackface. But wearing an Asian dress? That's completely different. There's simply no parallel here. In fact, Asians living in Asia are arguably the most pro-cultural fusion people in the world. Every Asian I know has no problem with people of other races adopting aspects of their culture, provided that they do it respectfully. In fact, my Asian relatives quite enjoyed Netta's performance.

From my perspective, it really wasn't 'cultural appropriation'. It was just, well, special