Why I Shouldn't Be Ashamed of Wearing Cultural Attire
As a kid, I used to love wearing qipao, a type of Chinese formal dress. In second grade, I owned two of them, both with pink silk and embroidery, and would wear them any chance I got. Putting them on made me feel like a princess. They were elegant, formal, and classy, yet vivacious at the same time. Also, wearing qipao made me feel closer to my cultural roots. When I put on my qipao, it just felt right. When I was wearing the qipao, I was saying to the world, “I am Chinese. I am proud. I am meant to wear the dress of my people. I will carry on my cultural legacy.”
As I became older and grew out of my old qipao, my family bought me new ones from China, this time with purple lace and black sequined flowers. I didn’t wear them as much, if at all. My parents complained about how they were a waste of money since they just hung in my closet collecting dust. Relatives suggested that I wear them to my viola recitals, to bat mitzvahs, to the homecoming dance, and even to a couple of very casual Sweet 16 birthday parties. I promised them that I would wear my qipaos, but I rarely did. Sometimes I wore them around the house just for the sake of putting them on. I wore one once to a wedding, but it felt starchy and stiff and I felt out of place. I never wore them in public again. Eventually, I outgrew my last few purple lace qipaos. I never bought another one. This marked the end of my qipao-wearing days. I replaced my qipao with a couple of Ralph Lauren formal wear staples and never looked back.
At some point, I no longer felt comfortable wearing qipao in public or to formal occasions where they would have been welcomed. Why? They were perfectly appropriate for those kinds of events. Qipao are still a popular type of formal wear in China. They’re still alive and well. It’s not like they’re ugly or tacky, either. A good qipao, made and worn well, is elegant and is nothing to be ashamed of.
I was and am the problem here. I’m not ashamed of my culture and my homeland, but I still have apprehensions about showing my heritage to the world through wearing the qipao. But, I can’t blame myself too much--I think younger me was just trying to avoid a world of half-assed, almost jeering “ni hao’s” and being asked “Where are you REALLY from?” Shedding my qipao meant that I could fit in with the rest of the cocktail dress-wearing crowd instead of sticking out and becoming somewhat of an exotic sideshow attraction. And, really, I didn’t want to be stopped in the middle of the road and subjected to lengthy conversations about how “beautiful and mystical” my culture was. I want to be seen as a writer and a musician and a leader, not just as the token asian or a cultural oddity. Somewhere along my journey to becoming defined by more than my face and my race, I decided that hiding my cultural identity instead of flaunting it yielded better results for me in the long run.
Although I still wear Ralph Lauren instead of qipao, I’m journeying toward a new stage of my life: post-qipao-denial. I’ve taken so many steps toward accepting and embracing my cultural identity. I am a writer and a musician and so much else, and I’m Chinese. I’m happy to finally accept and acknowledge that. I’m writing about issues, concerns, and thoughts on my cultural identity that I didn’t even think to address previously. The addition of my Chinese name on my Facebook is one step of me accepting who I am, not just an aesthetic choice. I’m no longer afraid of speaking Chinese with strangers. Now, when people approach me with their broken Chinese, I just smile, unfazed. Maybe I’ll even go out and buy a qipao soon. I’m done being ashamed.