Week 2: Clothing's Power for Empathy

Haley Bergman

ASA 141 Week 2
Clothing's Power for Empathy

In the reading of "Clothing, social empathy and the power of stepping into someone's shoes" by Michael Hurt the idea of people's desire to mirror one another is made. Hurt provides evidence that this 'mirroring' is not in theory a bad thing, since it can create an intimate connection between cultures. One of the examples Hurt points to how tourists want to wear the national dress of where they are visiting.

Whether it be tourists wearing yellow silk robes at the great wall of China or wearing the traditional Hanbok in Korea; this idea of mirroring is prevalent everywhere and the purpose of Hurts photography is to create a visual documentation of this cultural phenomenon.

In doing more research specifically about tourists wearing the Hanbok in Korea I came across multiple ’visit Korea’ and ’traveling to Korea’ websites. These websites all talked about how and where to rent a Hanbok when visiting Korea and the correct ways to wear them. I found this very interesting because it seems that tourists are being encouraged to wear the Hanbok when visiting and even given a list of 8 scenic historic areas to visit while wearing the Hanbok.

Ultimately; this leaves me with the question of: is it appropriate and, in fact, progressive to encourage tourists to wear traditional dress of countries they are visiting, as long as there is a guide line on how to do it respectfully in order to increase understanding and empathy for different cultures? Or are tourists who go to these countries and wear traditional dress appropriating the culture which could snowball and lead to more ignorance and stereotypes?

https://english.visitkorea.or.kr/enu/ATR/SI_EN_3_6.jsp?cid=2542443