Yes, ask to split the bill when the server takes your order. I have a couple of friends that always want to just throw some cash at me when the bill comes. The problem is that they don't take tip and tax into account at all, and I'm lucky if they include their drinks. I always split the bill. I also drink less then…

My dermatologist's office used to have a sign at reception that read, "If you are grouchy, mean, or just plain difficult, there will be a $10 fee for putting up with you." I always hoped they made good on that threat.

Is it possible her partner was British? To Americans, lemonade is diluted, sweetened, lemon-juice. To them, it's Sprite. I do not know why this is.

I used to get people who thought if they split the bill they wouldn't have to pay the gratuity that was applied to parties of 8 or more. Dudes, why do you think we'd let you pay less for making us do more work?

I was working as hostess during New Year's Eve one year, and we had a party of ten. I listened as they told their server how they wanted their checks split (I was filling their waters as they ordered), and it was all very usual.

I don't understand my bra. It doesn't have any wires, and still it makes my boobs stay in place. How does it work? How? Guess I should remove it, then.

Meanwhile, I was practically forced at gunpoint into a kimono by the Japanese people in my town... because they wanted to parade myself and the other foreigners in town around the town hall as part of a "fashion show." Now, who's appropriating what there, exactly? Stuff like that is why I give some of these posts from…

This impulse to shame and attack westerners for crossing cultural lines (that non westerners cross each day by adopting western-style clothing or manners) isn't a sincere debate about protecting cultural symbols or championing the rights of the underdog—it's an emotional fixation on perceived historical injustices…

I'm with you - I don't know where the line is. Is it inappropriate if a white person wears a sari? What if a black person wears tartan plaid - traditionally Scottish? Or if a non-American wears jeans? A non-Christian wearing a cross? A Christian wearing a cross on its side? When I wear eyeliner, am I appropriating…

Wait...so it's a thing that doesn't necessarily have a fixed cultural or religious meaning but since you think it's important, that's enough reason to say no one else can use it because, for you, it has a definition.

It's not difficult when you impose your view—that wearing something is "fetishizing" it, that people are being asked to be "allowed to wear whatever they want"—which is clearly totally negative, onto what is not, in many circumstances, a negative act. Cultures have always been fluid, have always interacted with one…

I agree with this. I DEFINITELY don't understand when it's clothing or fabric patterns. I can certainly understand when it's something of religious significance. I'm Jewish, I'd feel a little weird if I saw someone wearing tefillan (leather straps that hold a prayer box in place - a little kinky if you ask me)... but…

Wow, you're 20 years too late for this crisis... I take it you weren't around for the 1990s? Over-the-counter bindi, & non-bindi stick-on-forehead-gems, became a thing then. And it's not likely to go away, because people of all cultures & races like to stick sparkly shit on themselves.

I long ago stopped wearing mummy costumes for Halloween when I realized how I was hurting my Arab brethren by appropriating. Moreover it was horribly disrespectful to take something as commonly grotesque and associated with feces as toilet paper is and use that to mimic traditional mummy garb which has a religious…

Seriously?! I hate cultural appropriation too, especially when it comes to my Hindu/Indian culture (e.g. see the ridiculous Christian Yoga phenomenon, that shit drives me crazy!) but this is not that. The majority of Indian women do not treat bindis as a religious symbol anymore. It is fashion. Go into any bindi shop…

Say my sister-in-law, who is white, buys a jade charm. Is it wrong for her to wear it because she's NOT Chinese or Vietnamese (I'm sure I'm missing other cultures, but those are the two I know who consider jade as lucky. I actually don't fully understand the significance of jade other than the luck factor - at least…

this whole article is kind of silly. Now I'm ashamed as a black person about how others might have perceived my racial group and seen us as whiners and overly sensitive. I have rocked a "bindi" as a little girl. Sorry I did. I wasn't trying to steal from any culture. I was simply a little african girl obsessed with…

Read it before, didn't agree with some of it then. There is a moral and ethical distinction between the fundamentally neutral act of adorning yourself with clothing or accessories or whatever inspired by another culture and manipulating, misrepresenting, harming, or making fun of that culture. In my view, the latter…

that was also my first reaction. I mean, yeah, not fetishizing opressed minorities, rock on, right there with ya. But maybe some things belong to a global aesthetic vocabulary and can be used in loose association, if any, with their original signifier. Floating that idea without preaching it, just feeling like…

Alright, I'm getting a bit tired of this appropriation bullshit. Any culture that has ever encountered another has adopted ideas, styles, science, religion, language, art, habits, customs, money, and had sex with each other. This has been happening since the beginning of fucking time. The idea that a person can't wear…