Cultural Representation Policy

The short version

We ship cultural styles based on national attire and historical court dress — clothing, jewellery, and setting traditions a person would wear with pride at a wedding, festival, formal portrait, or state occasion. We do not generate sacred markers (Tā moko, sindoor, Indigenous regalia / war bonnets / eagle feathers, religious vestments on non-clergy), and we never change a user's skin colouras a stylistic effect. We name cultures correctly, never as “Asian” or “tribal” or “exotic.” If a style misses the mark, the report link below pulls it from the catalogue while we revise it.

Why this policy exists

Two things tend to go badly when an AI tool ships “cultural” styles without thinking about them carefully:

• Sacred markers get used as costume.Tā moko (Māori facial tattoos) are genealogical and earned. Indigenous regalia and eagle feathers are ceremonial and culturally restricted. Bindis and sindoor mark specific religious / marital meanings. A “wear this like a costume” AI feature on these markers is the textbook appropriation line, even when well-meaning.
• Skin colour gets changed as an effect.A style that says “apply this blue pigment” or “darken / lighten the skin” treats the user's skin as an effect surface. We won't do that.

The fix isn't to ship zero cultural styles — it's to be careful about which ones. National court dress and formal heritage attire from a culture's public iconography are treatable with respect. Sacred markers aren't.

What we will never generate

• Sacred or earned body markings.Tā moko (Māori facial tattoos), Polynesian ceremonial tattoos, any tattoo with sacred or earned-rank meaning we haven't verified is a stylistic option in modern public dress.
• Indigenous regalia and ceremonial markers. Plains war bonnets, eagle feathers, ribbon shirts, sun-dance regalia, or any garment a culture treats as ceremonial / restricted.
• Skin-colour changes as a stylistic effect.No “blue Tuareg indigo transfer,” no darkening or lightening to fit a category, no body-paint that overwrites the user's actual skin tone. If a culture is associated with a body-paint or indigo aesthetic, we either find a way to evoke the look through wardrobe and setting alone, or we don't ship the style.
• Religious markers applied to people they don't belong to.No bindis or sindoor as fashion. No saffron robes / monastic dress applied as a costume. No clergy vestments. No deity iconography applied to a user's face or chest.
• Caricatures or “barbarian” framing.No “tribal warrior,” no “exotic dancer,” no over-sexualised cultural attire. Cultural styles are formal and respectful by default.
• Cultures we haven't researched.If we haven't done the work to know what's formal-public versus sacred-private, we don't ship the style yet.

What we ship with care

These categories are appropriate when treated formally and named correctly:

• National court dress and formal attire. Korean hanbok, Vietnamese áo dài, Mongolian deel, Chinese hanfu, Japanese kimono / furisode, South Asian formal-wedding wear, Mexican charro, Scottish Highland, Persian Qajar court dress, Egyptian Pharaonic court dress, Greek classical drapery, Nordic / Iberian / Baltic regional formal dress.
• Festive and celebratory attirethat's publicly worn and not religiously restricted.
• Modern editorial interpretationsof regional fashion (e.g., “K-drama leading-actor wardrobe”) when explicitly framed as contemporary fashion, not historical / ceremonial dress.

Each one ships with a prompt scaffold that uses the culture's public iconography (palette, fabric, setting) without invoking sacred markers, and is reviewed against this policy before going live.

How we name cultural styles

• Name the culture correctly.“Korean hanbok-inspired,” never “Asian dress.” “West-African-inspired,” never “tribal” or “African” as if that were one culture.
• Period-correct framing.“Joseon-era hanbok” not “ancient Korean.” “Tang-dynasty hanfu” not “old Chinese.”
• No exoticising language.Words like “exotic,” “tribal,” “primitive,” “ethnic” (as a flavour, not a fact) don't appear in any cultural style's name, tagline, or marketing copy.
• People over places.When a culture has both a country name and a people name, we use the people name (“Māori,” not “New Zealand native”).

How we research a culture before shipping

Before a cultural style ships we research, in this order:

1. What is public and formal vs. sacred or restricted?Cultural-attire reference materials, museum collections, and the culture's own contemporary public-portrait conventions (state portraits, formal wedding photography, opera / national-arts costumes). If a marker only shows up in ceremonial or religious contexts, it's out of scope.
2. What does the modern community treat as costume-acceptable?If contemporary members of that culture publicly wear the attire in formal portraits, we treat it as fair game. If wearing it outside that community is a known sore point, we don't ship the style.
3. What's a respectful prompt scaffold?The scaffold describes wardrobe, backdrop, lighting and grade — never the user's ethnicity, never their facial features, never their skin tone. The user remains the user; only the wardrobe and setting change.

The current cultural catalogue and the research notes behind each style are on file. We'll publish the per-style notes when the cultural set crosses ~20 entries.

Reporting a style that misses the mark

If a cultural style on FreeHeadshot misses the mark — wrong period, wrong attribution, includes a marker that should be off-limits, or just feels disrespectful when generated — please tell us. Email [email protected]with subject “Cultural style — [style name]”, or use the contact form.

Our default response to a credible report is to pull the style from the cataloguewithin 24 hours while we revise it. We don't debate the report — we revise. The style either comes back with the issue fixed, or it stays out.

How this policy changes

This page is the standing version. When we ship a meaningful change (new culture added in scope, new prohibited marker added, scope of a hard line clarified), we update the “Last updated” stamp above the policy. Material changes are also called out in the next site update we publish. If you'd like a specific question answered before relying on a section here, email [email protected].