Avoiding Cultural Appropriation with your Mermaid Costume

[Little Selkie Rill]

Cat amongst the pidgeons... or I guess... uh, Blue Whale amongst the Krill (???)...

What if you come from a culture whose entire cultural bag is, unfortunately, appropriating other cultures and "Anglicising" them via Empire building? "Britian" is all about building empires and taking the good stuff from other cultures then saying it belongs to them. Like, for example, a lot of people mention their cultural heritage is Scottish (including in Raina's article) and immediately say "tartan, kilts, bagpipes, etc.".... only, though those are now in fact synonymous with Scotland, and yes, we don't help matters when we tell tourists that we hunt haggis (which is a type of pig-bird-hybrid with one leg shorter than the other that runs around hills sideways and loves to eat fresh heather honey, fyi)... BUT, actually, none of those things are truly Scottish in origin; even our mythogical heritage is somewhat of a hodgepodge between Irish and Welsh Celtic, Anglo-Saxon English, Breton/Basque/French and Germanic/Norse, etc. (I think essentially Northern and West European?) The earliest archaeological evidence of bagpipes is actually Etruscan/Middle Eastern and they most likely migrated to the British Isles when the Byzantine/Greco or Roman Empires invaded our shores; or potentially via pre-historic trading routes, we will likely never really know. Kilts were only introduced in the 16th Century in some sort of fashion statement/propaganda move (and essentially all fashion is cultural appropriation and is cyclical in nature to boot) during one of our many wars with "The Auld Enemy" and then largely abandoned as "national dress" until the age of steam when Victorian nostalgia for a time of shortbread tin tartan was a big pull for a newly minted Scottish tourist industry (Visit Scotland tourist board, 19th C edition, haha); and are actually a Scandanavian/Norse tradition (though tbh, genetically speaking, most Scots are at least a couple percent Viking). So, what I'm asking is, how long does something have to be part of your culture's "Cultural Identity" before it's no-longer seen as appropriation?

I am too Celtic to function, btw, even my non-British Isles Scots-Irish-Welsh-Cornish/Devon(ish?) cultural background is mostly Celtic, Pictish (which is technically still largely indistinguishable from Celtic though) or Gaulish-Celt or Germanic-Norse (much of which crosses over with Celtic culture anyway due to trade, inter-marriage and invasion/raiding), though I do have some Anglo-Saxon and Belgian/Low-Countries blood in me several greats back on one side (my mum's family seems to have basically gone, Ireland-Scotland-Ireland-Scotland or Scotland-Ireland-Scotland and that's it as far as we can tell [though there's a chance there might be some Welsh in there as well on one side]... My dad's were slightly more adventurous, but not by very much: Ireland-Scotland & Wales-Cornwall-Devon-Scotland and Ireland-Scotland & France-Germany-Belgium/Low Countries-Scotland respectively; but due to the specific Scottish regions there's a high chance of Viking blood millenia ago). If you are at all European there's a high chance that due to population movement and migration (the side effect of which is cultural trade-off and sharing or adaption of stories/mythologies and traditions), you'll have at least a little bit of most European cultures other than the obvious ones from where you grew up somewhere up your family seaweed tree. The Byzantine, Etruscan and Greco-Roman Empire got around pretty much everywhere (except for most of Scotland) back in the day!

I guess also, what I want to ask (and a point a few other people have raised) is: is your cultural identity only your genetic identity (and how far back can you legitimately go to not be seen as appropriating from another culture)? Or is it only the national and social culture of the place(s) you have grown-up/lived in during your life (can you adopt cultural identities by being a citizen of a given country, or by marriage for example?)? Or is your cultural identity a combination of several factors?

Also... just gonna leave this here because it's interesting (to me anyway):

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetic_history_of_Europe

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geneti..._British_Isles

Culturally speaking, I am a pirate.