As most of you know by now, there is a trending app that many teens use called TikTok.

TikTok is a social media platform where people have the chance to share many different forms of creative content. Recently, a video was uploaded to the app by a group of five teenage girls and the Chicana/Hispanic culture was not happy.

This particular video caught my attention because the outfits seemed familiar and their caption was also offensive to the Hispanic culture and to myself.

Then, after reading the caption, I became more interested in this topic. This specific TikTok video shows five girls dancing to a song called “Party Girl” by StaySolidRocky. It resulted in quite a bit of backlash regarding the caption and clothes they were wearing.

The thing that offended a lot of the Chicana/Latinx/Hispanic culture was that these girls were wearing a bandana as a shirt and called it “basic” in the caption. I assume that these girls did not intend to offend anyone, but I do think more people should be educated on cultural appropriation. I also think before uploading something, it’s important to be cautious of who might get offended.

Cultural appropriation is when someone uses a practice or a culture inappropriately, and I think this video was offensive in a lot of ways and shouldn’t be a trend because it shows a part of the Chicana culture.

Before wearing a bandana around as a shirt, people should educate themselves on the topic, because the Chicana culture is not something to play with, and neither are other cultures.

Here’s a little background about the Chicana/Chicano culture: the term Chicana/Chicano means a female or male who is a Mexican-American. A Chicana/Chicano is someone who was raised in the United States but also has Mexican origin or a person who was born in México but has a US citizenship. The reason why the Chicana/Hispanic culture got offended by this video was because these are clothes that Chicanas wear, who have been judged for this clothing and were not treated with respect.

But now a lot of girls have followed this “style.” They call it “fashionable” and “trendy.”

This was really upsetting not only to me, but to other people as well because being Chicana isn’t a trend, it’s a culture.

Another problem with the video was the caption. The caption in the video stated, “we’re basic [I know].”

This caption offended the Chicana/Hispanic/Latinx culture because it calls the culture “basic.” There happened to be so much negative backlash on that video that they ultimately decided to turn off the comment section.

I do believe they probably didn’t want to offend anyone, but unfortunately, they did.

As a Chicana and Hispanic person myself, I was offended by the caption, because I felt as if they were calling my culture “basic.”

Everyone has their own opinion, but something that I don’t think is okay is just wearing bandanas this way as a fashion trend because this is not a fashion trend, it’s a culture.

There were a few users who responded to this video.

TikTok user Deonte Towner spoke about this video on his account and gave an explanation of the whole situation for those who were not aware of the problem. Towner explained both points of view and also gave his point of view. “Put some respect on the culture,” he said.

I personally think that the original video was offensive because if a Hispanic/Chicana/Latinx person walked down the street dressed like this we would be racially profiled, but it’s seen as stylish for someone else to use it as a fashion trend.

Cultural appropriation has not been handled right, and it needs to stop. There needs to be an end to this because at the end of the day, mi cultura is not your fashion.