Cindy Shuai Blog #4

Sharon Kinsella. “Cuties in Japan.”

Kan Xi Lai Le April 2009

Dah Xie Shon Le Mei May 2010

The article "Cuties in Japan is documenting on how the culture has developed this extreme obsession with cute style. Girls compete with how they can be cuter, they are obsessed with dressing cute, acting cute, talking cute, writing cute, etc. and it is common in Asia. This culture is more than just the American trend, but it is a cultural movement to me. I have recently watched subbed Asian talk shows and if a girl is not cute in the way she dress, talk, walk, etc then she is not considered attractive, and sometimes even worse that she is not considered a girl. This is displayed in the celebrities in the two extremely popular television shows, to showcase celebrities who are cute and speaks softly and makes innocent cute faces. This culture that makes the girl into one kind of personality is extremely trying on the Asian females, as in the public only desire after one kind of girls, and any other kind of personality is seen as manly and unfeminine. This picture was taken a car show in Japan of a import car model. Yet if you see the style of import models in Asia car shows in comparison to the car models anywhere else, the models will greatly differ in the scale of "cuteness." As a person who is about to embark on a 9 month journey to tour Taiwan, China, and Japan, I am honestly scared because I do not fit into this scale of cuteness. I guess I will have to see.

As for the compact challenge, I realized that I have redirected my money spending towards food, and services industries. I now frequently visit restaurants, cafes, and salons. I am not sure if this is good for my figure, which is fine because I have no new clothes to try one anyway. :( Other than that, when I told my parents of this challenge, they were unhappy. As both of my parents are from the medical field, they told me of the horrors of parasites of used clothes etc and they asked me to not buy any used clothing for the fear for my health. Not sure if I should be putting this on this blog, but at least it's one aspect of looking at it.