ASA 141
Vrinda Gupta
5/11/19
This image of a “post racial fashion economy” that Min-ha Pham examines in The Taste and Aftertaste for Asian Superbloggers, is the desire for mainstream fashion to create a multicultural liberal facade of acceptance of other people of color and marginalized communities. By validating Asian superbloggers by using their fashion in runways and advertisements, it celebrates their work while also heavily depending on it for commodification and profit.
Additionally, although Asian “cute culture” places Asian culture and fashion at the forefront of Western economy, it also reinforces Orientalism in a different capacity. By commercializing Asian products as cute, and soft, it boosts the stereotype of Asians being demure, inferior, and oppressed. Many white YouTubers transform themselves to look like Korean and Japanese characters using makeup and clothing, claiming they are attracted to look like a whole other race and want to be just like them. This treads the boundaries of fetishization, and the more that Asian goods are marketed as “cute and tiny” products, the more Asian culture will be continued to be orientalized and deemed inferior.
Below is a video of a white makeup artist trying to use makeup to get "Asian eyes"
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