It is quite shocking to see how the concept of orientalism and imperialist feminism are connected. From my understanding of this article, the American feminism is a power bloc that profit from appropriating Indo-chick culture and distort the images of South Asians at the same time. As an ex-feminist myself, I used to think it was the right thing to “save” third world country women from their cultural oppression and did not realized how flawed this mentality is. Sadly, this is the mentally of the oppressor to justify their involvement in their countries, mainly for the reason of “keeping peace.”
Moreover, I did not realize that an appropriate culture like Indo-chic is more than just a commodity. “The emergence of Indo-chic has to be tried a structural analysis of global capitalist production, immigration trends, and the contradictions of cultural citizenship” (p. 238). The Indo-chic culture is tied with global capitalist productions because the American Empire is exploiting Indians in India for cheap labor to make products such as Henna, Bindis, etc. Additionally, it is also tied to immigrations trends because of the second wave immigration from South Asia and these people were from poor, working-class. Despite their invisibility, their cultures are visible in the popular culture. Lastly, it is tied to the contradictions of cultural citizenship because South Asians are still viewed as foreigners and other negative stereotypes even though there is a mass consumption of their culture.
Overall, it is difficult to say that this regime of appropriation is completely bad because it serves as a transnational bridge for immigrants in American to embrace both of their American and ethnic cultures.
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