Week 7
Rhegille Baltazar
Kawamura's piece discusses "Teens as Producers of Street Fashion" in Japan and how specific youth subcultures create fashion trends in the country. It is important to note that youth subcultures are in response to the mainstream culture or dominant culture. Japan is famously known for its uniform and cohesive nature especially after the 1980s during its economic boom according to Kawamura. Thus, a movement toward individualism and identity emerged within Japanese youth thus producing these pockets of subcultures one sees.
Kawamura explains Ganguro which is a fashion subculture based upon blackface in which mostly women overly tan themselves and beach blonde their hair. Although the politics of race are different in Japan than in the U.S., I question the reasons for the need to overly tan and change their skin tone. What brought them to believe that this was a fashionable aesthetic?
Furthermore, I think of this article in relation to the short videos we have seen in class in relation to Japanese Cholx culture. Kawamura describes what the testimonials said in the videos perfectly: that Japan is known for its uniformity and that this style was a way for people to differentiate themselves. Yet, can a response to a social or economic issue justify certain (arguably) racist forms of fashion/style?
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