Simran Randhawa’s striking selfies are one of the main draws to her popular South Asian-influenced Instagram, @simisear_. Randhawa, born in London to a Punjabi family, takes wearing a bindi to a bejeweled level, either by placing gilded bits in a line down her forehead or by tracing her brow bone with glinting dots. Though the traditional piece is now synonymous with the 21-year-old's Indo-West look, she only began wearing a bindi a few years ago. The decision to finally embrace it “very much comes from my own apprehension [about] wearing Indian clothes outside of the house when I was younger,” says Randhawa, who rejected her cultural heritage as a teenager while trying to fit into her English friend group. “It was a tense battle for me.”
The bindi is a decorative mark worn between the eyes or in the middle of the forehead by Hindu women. The term hails from the Sanskrit word bindu meaning “drop” or “spot” and comes in different forms that can be jewelry or a small red circle made from vermillion powder. Its meaning varies as well: At times, the bindi is considered to have religious significance and is worn during prayer; it can also dictate marital status.
Further West, however, the distinctive mark has a long history of cultural appropriation. Gwen Stefani often wore the bejeweled piece during her late-’90s No Doubt years; Selena Gomez, along with other concert-goers, sported a bindi during Coachella in 2014. But for Randhawa, now living in a Brexit-era England, the bindi has always symbolized a struggle. “I don’t think it is cool for it to be trendy. I think [the] bindi is a very hot topic. Especially, for South Asians in the diaspora.”
Randhawa, currently a student at the University of Bristol and the assistant politics editor for Gal-dem, is a part of a small group of women of South Asian heritage in England who have been redefining the appearance of the bindi and reclaiming their culture by wearing the traditional piece with their everyday London looks. 21-year-old Amisha Acharya, a cosmetic studies undergraduate who hails from a Nepali-Hindu family, wore bindis as a child, stopped, and then recently started wearing them again. “It was [around the time that] Kendall Jenner wore a bindi to Coachella, and High Street stores started selling them for ridiculous prices. I realized later I wasn't the only one [who] felt uncomfortable. I saw so many beautiful South Asians turn to social media as a platform to reclaim our culture,” writes Acharya of her decision. “It’s a part of my identity and where I come from. As much as I believe identity labels can be limiting sometimes, I'm hopelessly patriotic about my country and where I was born.”
Dejah Naya McCombe, a student at Middlesex University London studying Fashion Communication, grew up in a South Asian community in a mixed-race family with Indian heritage and wears a red kumkum bindi. She likens it to “the third eye, the eye that sees the things that physical eyes can’t.” For all of her discomfort with appropriation (women wearing bindis on other parts of their bodies, bindis being sold as “face jewelry” at trendy stores), wearing one has become a joyful addition to McCombe’s wardrobe. “It’s empowering to know that the women before you have struggled while wearing the bindi. It’s kind of a symbol of solidarity,” she writes. “Me and my auntie may not wear it for the same reasons—but we are both wearing it,” she says, referencing the bindi's ability to traverse generational as well as geographical divides. “We are connected.”