I have recently come to realize not many people know a lot about Indian culture and assume everything is CA because of some people spreading misinformation. Also, this is my opinion. In the end, it is up to you whether you think this is CA or not.
So today I want to tell some people what I know about Bindis(I am not sure if it is spelled bindhi or bindi). Throughout this "essay" I will be calling bindi, Potte(I think this is how you spell it.)
The main reason I will be calling potte is that is what you call bindi in Malayalam(my mother tongue). I am Indian btw.
Ok so here are the pics of Soyeon and Jennie that caused these accusations.
Ok, lets start with the different types of pottes/bindhis.
The red potte/bindhi
So this is the large version, there are small versions too! I prefer the smaller versions over the big ones, looks nicer
This is the smaller version(I feel like they look a little big here but they are much smaller than they look in this pic). It is the color black(lol why am I saying this I am pretty sure yall know your colors).
I am actually wearing this type of potte right now! Feels nice and for some reason I feel 100% prettier lol, I kind of stopped wearing it because of some rude people back in 3rd grade.
And here are the ones that Jennie and Soyeon wore(or at least similar)
I couldn't find the exact ones Soyeon and Jennie wore but they have the same meaning and are close enough.
Now let's talk about the meanings of these pottes.
The red potte is something married women wear, and technically only married women should wear them but I have worn them before(at home, I didn't wear it in public) and I mainly did that to see how it looked.
The black potte is what unmarried women or children like me wear. I am not exactly sure about other parts of India but in Kerala(the state I used to live in, I moved to the U.S a few years ago) married women can also wear black potte.
Also the ones that I showed above are the sticker versions of pottes, there are liquid bindis that come in different colors. Purple, blue, yellow, pink, white etc. Purple is my fav(my fav color is purple).
Now lets looks talk about the ones Soyeon and Jennie wore. I call them crystal pottes, cause that is what they look like. Long story short they don't have any cultural value. They are literally just fashion statements. As you can see in the picture I provided.
It is literally advertised as Lady FASHION. You won't find a long paragraph on the religious meaning of the crystal potte because there is no meaning.
It is fashion, it doesn't have any cultural meaning from my part of India and if a non-Indian wears it I have no problem with it. So this is pretty much the reason why in my opinion Jennie and Soyeon's CA isn't CA. Basically, it is an accessory.
P.S
So I just came upon this on Reddit. Apparently, there is a debate going on whether the sticker red and black pottes should be considered fashion or a cultural symbol because the original traditional pottes were actually was made on liquid(it is kind of hard to explain).
I am not sure if this is true because I have not heard about this before but then again I haven't been to India for a while. And the explanations of the meanings of the black and red bindis are the simple/most basic version.
There are more meanings to them and if you are interested you can search them up and learn more about bindi. I suggest you search up black/red bindi and not potte because for some reason it doesn't show up when you search up potte.
Thank you for listening to my ted talk.
Also, babies are soooo cute with bindis. They are so adorable. Ok, I will stop blabbering.
