51–60 of 147 posts
What struck me as odd in Asia were all the skin whitening products. Even regular cosmetics had "Whitening" plastered over it.
What about the eyelid surgery that is all the rage?
However, a quick google search http://bit.ly/bHOnEC doesn't show a particular bias for double or single eyelids in anime.
"The Other has to be marked. If there are no stereotyped markings of otherness, then white is assumed." This may be true but it has very little to do with anime. As others have pointed out (i) anime artists have been influenced by their Western counterparts (anime is not a traditional Japanese art form, you know) and (ii) commercial considerations play a role, i.e. very Japanese looking characters would have less appeal to a large audience.
But forget about that and just think about the argument to see how faulty it is: In its essence it is trying to show how lop-sided white Westerners see the world but it itself is also very prejudiced. Do you think when a Chinese person looks at an anime character they think it's Chinese (because "otherness" isn't marked)? This sort of thinking is typical of a lot of mumbo-jumbo that comes out of English departments under literary criticism. If Japanese didn't have to mark "otherness", why are the characters in traditional Japanese paintings look very Japanese (slanted eyes, hairdo, etc.).
In the end the article states: "Some Americans, even some scholars, will argue against this view of anime. They want to think the Japanese worship America or worship whiteness and use anime to prove it. But they seem to be driven more by their own racism and nationalism than anything else." This is another common tactic: when someone raises a problematic viewpoint, label them as racist, misogynistic, or worse (e.g. see the Summers episode).
How can you explain that a lot of Japanese women go through cosmetic surgery to get rid of the slant in their eyes to make them look more Western? Why is baseball so popular in Japan? Japan has had a long love/hate relationship with the US (and Westerners in general). I'm not saying some form of American idealization is at the heart of anime styles but I think it has definitely influenced it.
EDIT: For similar over the top ideas about race and culture and to see how politicized the debate can be, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_Egyptian_race_controver...
Simple because paper is white?
What struck me as odd in Asia were all the skin whitening products. Even regular cosmetics had "Whitening" plastered over it.
[Edited from one of my comments ( http://thesocietypages.org/socimages/2010/08/30/guest-post-w... ) at the article] Many people want to show that they have the financial means to enjoy leisure - whether that be because you’re well paid enough to take holidays, or because you employ others. Most of the westernised world aims to get a tan - it shows that we have the means to go to far away sunny places and laze in the…
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Look at this: http://www.google.com/search?&q=site:answers.yahoo.com+J...
Look at this: http://www.google.com/webhp?hl=en#sclient=psy&hl=en&... What's the point. I bet there are a million bigots, immature kids, and ignorant people asking questions on Yahoo Answers. Unfortunately every country has people like this, it's not exclusive to one area. Let's just all read this and decide collectively that Yahoo Answers should never again be used as debate source material: http://answers.yahoo.com…
What struck me as odd in Asia were all the skin whitening products. Even regular cosmetics had "Whitening" plastered over it.
Yes, and the "best" whitening products are made in Japan. Fair skin is often considered a desirable thing among many of the Asian cultures. A distinction needs to be made. Most of the Asians using whitening products aim to get the skin to #ffffff, not the color of caucasian skin. Caucasians are a few tints darker than #ffffff.
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Reminds me of a funny story a professor told me. Back in the days of apartheid, someone told a Japanese friend of his that in South Africa, that he'd have the same status as a "white", to which he retorted "Why would I want to be white?"
Relatedly, "Asian" is a category which exists in America a heck of a lot more than it exists in Asia. (I was helping one of my friends with a grad school application. He got to race, asked me why a school would need to know this -- silly Japanese person, how would we run our racial discrimination departments without sorting you first -- and couldn't find Japanese on the menu so he picked Other. Quote, "The closest I…
In the 90s, I was totally baffled by the popularity of the 'Azn' movement.
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You see a lot of that in the Philippines especially. Everyone wants to be as white as possible, so they carry umbrellas to block the sun, and use whitening lotions and soaps. Contrast that with the US, where people want to be tan, to the point of using tanning salons and spray-on tans.
I had initially assumed that whitening creams were used to create a caucasian look - an idea which I found quite repulsive. When a friend explained that it was to mimic the appearance of the upperclass, whose skin colour contrasted with a labourer's, it began to make sense. When thought of as a status enhancer, it doesn't seem that disimilar to tanning..
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Look at this: http://www.google.com/webhp?hl=en#sclient=psy&hl=en&... What's the point. I bet there are a million bigots, immature kids, and ignorant people asking questions on Yahoo Answers. Unfortunately every country has people like this, it's not exclusive to one area. Let's just all read this and decide collectively that Yahoo Answers should never again be used as debate source material: http://answers.yahoo.com…
You are right. edanm asked for some evidence that there are idiots who think Japanese worship white people. It seems there are many, so the article really targets an existing problem. That's the point.