RE: Personal Space -- Ninety Fourth Post

I recently watched a video about how white people should please stop trying to touch black people's hair. This really impacted me because I have been guilty of trying to touch my dear friend's hair, much to her annoyance. She is black. Anyway, I realized that invading other people's personal space when they don't invite you to do so makes you an asshole. I should know this already because I despise having my personal space invaded with a deep and fiery passion, but I invade others' personal space "because it's funny" when they get mad. Which makes me an asshole.

Damn it. Say it with me: I am an asshole. And I'm going to try and stop being an asshole right now.

Anyway, what started off as white guilt turned into a longer thought process about how white American thinks it's okay to invade your personal space if you are "different." Different here includes being any color other than white,  having hair texture and length other than "fairly straight" and "about shoulder length-ish" or hair color outside the common hair colors seen on white people, having an out-of-the-ordinary body shape (including pregnant), and sporting any body modifications including tattoos and non-ear piercings. This is mostly focused on women, because I am a woman and I can really only write my experiences (although I do try to be inclusive of non-me people, I know that I often fail) and also you don't hear a lot of stories about people randomly touching men except old white men playing footsie with cops in sex stings.*

Most people that I know won't just randomly waltz up and touch you unless they know it's not a big deal, or they think you're pregnant. But being outside of what white suburban America is convinced is "the ordinary" in any way makes white suburban people really curious. And, unfortunately, we're pretty much toddlers and have to be reminded to look with our eyes, not with our hands. In our defense (because I didn't mean to be an asshole), we often just think you are cool and different, and white culture has simultaneously and paradoxically made everything "different" both "other" and cool. It's the same thing we do with trans-gender surgeries: we objectify people by fixating on their physical characteristics.
I'm sorry.
One of my personal asshole issues is cultural appropriation. I think that the Dia de los Muertos celebration is really cool and has really pretty costumes and is a really rich historical and cultural thing, but that fact is that cultural appreciation is one thing and cultural appropriation is another. I'm not hispanic, I don't have that background or know anyone who wants to share it with me, so I'm just going to back the fuck off. It doesn't matter that I'm not trying to steal the celebration, the point is that it's not mine. And, also, by "not hispanic" I don't mean "brown and from an American country south of the US." I know blonde, white-skinned, blue-eyed hispanics; for me, ethnic identity is about history, not color. My ethnic identity is sort of "none" because "white suburban American" isn't an option.
It makes me kind of sad, actually, because I want a family history steeped in traditions and culture but what I've got is just a bunch of white people growing up, getting married, making babies, and living above the poverty line in America. There's a theory based on a photograph that one of my great-etc-grandmothers was Native American, but she always swore up and down that she was white because being a person of color used to mean that you were a second-class citizen in the US. So, I got nothing. Poor me, no one ever oppressed my ancestors :(
Okay, back to the topic of this post.

This is really actually focused on the bohemian-wanna-be, hipster-affiliated, liberal, white women who can often be found at liberal arts universities or working five miles off campus in that trendy establishment. You can often recognize them by the way their pinterest boards are covered with pictures of tattoos and hairstyles that look effortless and messy but in reality take twenty minutes, five hands, and three kinds of hair brush to accomplish. Currently, their clothing of choice includes high-waisted pants and shorts, loose blouses, and too many bracelets. If they approach you and you have anything out of their ordinary, be warned that these thoughts may be running through their heads:

• "Your hair is really cool, I want to know what it feels like because it isn't like my hair." Picture this, women with straight hair: you spent five hours trying to get your hair to go into curls for prom and you're extremely pleased with how it looks but nervous that it won't last the night. Now someone comes up and runs their hand through it. Maybe it's ruined, maybe it's fine, but the point is, you didn't want them to touch your hair. 
• "You have a tattoo, that's so cool! What does the skin feel like?" First of all, don't touch tattoos at all until they're all the way healed. Second, NO. We look with our eyes. If you want to know that badly, just get a damn tattoo. 
• "Oh my god is the baby kicking?!?!? You're making a tiny human, so I'm going to touch the place where you're keeping it." This one's just creepy. Disclaimer, I don't feel that way about pregnant women. But, judging by the stories about random people touching pregnant women, a distressing number of people actually think that way. What the fuck, people. 
• "Wow, you pierced that? ...What does it, y'know, feel like? Can I touch it?" This applies to facial, oral, dermal, belly button, and surface piercings as well as to nipple and genital piercings. It also applies to gauged ears. If the hole is big enough to stick a finger through, or looks that big, someone will want to stick their finger through it. Firmly dissuade them. Remove their hands from your person if necessary. Piercings don't heal fast, as a rule, and it's easy to get them infected or what have you by touching them with your grimy hands even if they've been healed up for ages. 
• "Your skin is so different from mine and it looks really pretty. I wonder what it feels like?" I guess "pretty" doesn't always run through people's heads when they see non-white skin, but that is because they suck. Everyone's skin is pretty. But that doesn't give anyone the inalienable right to touch it without your say-so.

"What does it feel like" is a common theme here. A lot of white suburban Americans in academia, at least, have this idea that because a lot of the people who founded colonies on the American continents were white-ish (I'm including the Spanish in my "white" term because they're historically caucasian in skin tone), to be a white suburban American is to be an explorer with a curious mind who must always be discovering new things. Unfortunately, we do have a lot of that good old colonial spirit because we like discover things that people are already doing.
Picture this: you just ran the boston marathon and got your goddamn medal thing because you ran twenty six fucking miles and then someone comes up with a fake boston marathon medal. They congratulate you on running the race and proudly display their fake medal, saying "I didn't run in the race, but I think that the boston marathon medals are so cool that I just had to have one. Why are you mad? I'm showing support! You should be grateful."
As a white person with no ethnic identity, this how it looks to me when white people appropriate culture.
People with ethnic identities: please tell me if I'm horribly wrong and should take this post down and stop pretending like I know how you feel and putting words in your mouth.


*I don't get sex stings. If no one's getting paid for consensual sex, isn't it legal no matter how many (or few) penises are involved? Please, please correct me if I'm wrong, because (1) I need to rethink my life and (2) I don't want to be right if consensual sex is wrong.