Comments on: Harajuku fashion

By: Harajuku Lover? Or Exploiter?: Authenticity of GothicLolitaware-lite « The Learned Fangirl

Wed, 16 Apr 2008 01:42:12 +0000

[…] basics of this story are not new: general cultural commodification combined with racialized doll-silence. As MiHi Ahn puts it in Salon: “Gwen Stefani neuters Japanese street […]

By: Molly

Molly — Thu, 29 Mar 2007 23:41:54 +0000

Hi, I’m a regular reader of this blog but this is (I believe) my first comment
Just a question: Why are Americans so obsessed with Japanese culture in the first place? Whether its the Anime Otaku’s, the teenage boys who watch Japanese porn, or the fixation on the prototypical “Japanese Teen” its really kind of strange. I mean Japanese culture has a lot of complexities, and, as much as it may shock the people who fetishize the country, it has plenty of deep running cultural flaws as well as good points. Its really rather strange how the US is totally obsessed with East Asia. I mean a healthy interest in other cultures is one thing but an obsession that glosses over day to day social issues or the “mundane” aspects that don’t sell as well to foreign audiences is slightly ridiculous. Really thats my thought on the Harajuku phenomenon

By: Savage Minds: Notes and Queries in Anthropology — A Group Blog » Commodifying Girls, Harajuku Style

Thu, 29 Mar 2007 06:19:48 +0000

[…] For one, I don’t think Walker addresses the fact that these girls are represented in an exploitatively orientalist manner. When Stefani came out with the Harajuku Girls back in April, the blogosphere was flooded with feminist and Asian-American critiques of how these four dolled up cyber-ghetto-geisha girls have become a harem-like accessory piece of a white girl (much of this criticism launched by a Salon article by MiHi Ahn and reproduced here by Howard French). The poster up top is a photoshopped expression of this critical perspective. […]

By: callum

callum — Thu, 07 Dec 2006 18:27:17 +0000

it sseems as soon as i rushed to her defence she had to let me down with her new single containing lyrics from sound of music. shes not really helped me help her help herself. but i still think her last albunm was good! ^^

By: Q Grrl

Q Grrl — Tue, 28 Nov 2006 17:48:01 +0000

S-p-o-n-g-e-c-a-k-e.

*drool*

By: ms_xeno

ms_xeno — Tue, 28 Nov 2006 17:43:39 +0000

I can’t pay you cash. Would you settle for a nice dish of lemon-custard spongecake ? Oh, and how about a bowl of homemade lentil soup ? You get two homemade snacks for the price of one organ. Nobody can top that deal !!

Yeah, the hilarity of calllum’s whining that Gwenniekins’ critics can be dismissed for being middle-class liberals is duly noticed. Who are all the people buying up her music, shooting her luxurious Hollywood videos, hawking her shitty looking fashions, etc. Shit. At ninety bucks a sweatshirt, I’m pretty sure that her target audience isn’t made up of starving graduate students doing Chomsky dissertations, elderly conservative church ladies and sleep-deprived single moms working double shifts at Denny’s. Yeesh.

By: Q Grrl

Q Grrl — Tue, 28 Nov 2006 15:55:41 +0000

Gawd, you know I’d just about give my right kidney to be middle class. I mean, really.

$$$

By: ms_xeno

ms_xeno — Tue, 28 Nov 2006 00:42:05 +0000

lum’’ is at the end for a reason.

BLAH HAHAHAH !!! Oh, the irony.

But– but–, if I shortn ur nam, i can tipe much fastr, Clum-chum.

(At any rate, people who responded to my posts back when I was still going by the “alsis” + the number of my age monicker usually dropped the number from the end of the name. I didn’t get too worked up about it. But, hey, I can appreciate the irony of you demanding respect while you fail to understand how Stefani’s use of Asian imagery is pretty damn disrespectful. She hires Asian women to dance attendence on her, renames them, and forbids them to speak. Nothing disrespectful about that, I suppose. Some of the links available through the link on post #15 go into great detail about this. I find it pretty distasteful, in addition to just being cheap gilding on a woman who strikes me as all style and no substance. She should just abandon the artiste pretenses and her pitiful, ugly line of overpriced fashions and head directly for her probable future career in Vegas lounges, where stuff like treating other races as exotic pets probably won’t raise an eyebrow.)

As fr th rson ur opinz r not much apresh, perhaps it has sumthng 2 do w ur ASSershuns nd insults such as:

Sorry but i think most of u are really sad.

Don’t pretend that you came here to make nicey-nice, since it’s clear that you didn’t. Also, I’ll be redundant and point out once more that your own views are at this point redundant. They were previously voiced –and roundly rebuked– by others on the thread.

By: curiousgyrl

curiousgyrl — Tue, 28 Nov 2006 00:13:47 +0000

I think the gwen fans are probably not idiots (evidence to the contrary admitted), but 14-year-olds. After all, on the internet, nobody knows if “your” a dog or a vet, and who else would state their IQ in public as evidence of intelligence?

14-year-olds, naturally. Which makes me feel slightly bad about the abuse.

This is one of my favorite all-time threads though.

By: callum

callum — Mon, 27 Nov 2006 22:58:33 +0000

Her music is over-produced, inch-deep crap. Her voice sounds like cyclamates escaped from a toxic time capsule, and she operates from some black hole that is clearly stunting the intellectual growth of her legions of fans;None of whom appear to have actually read the thread before rushing breathlessly to the defense of their born-again barbie doll idol. “Ur” computers need to be taken away, pronto, Gwenfans, and given to somebody more deserving. A roomful of monkeys hard at work on their Shakespeare impersonations, for instance…

isn’t that you going of the subject of how gwen uses the idea of harajuku girls and that she has them in her videos? u seem to be talking about your opinion of her music and then go onto offending her fans…

Because I can assure you that it’s not appreciated here

isn’t this a thread of differnt opinions on the subject matter? so surely my contribution is just as valid and accepted by people as yours?

and please don’t call me ”cal” the ”lum” is at the end for a reason.

By: ms_xeno

ms_xeno — Sun, 26 Nov 2006 09:37:28 +0000

Congratulations. Hurry on back to those oh-so-cozy spaces where “ur” magnificent genius and stunning taste in/for bubblegum can be properly appreciated, cal. Because I can assure you that it’s not appreciated here.

I’m not interested in how fast you can type. I’m interested in how well you can understand a thread that’s nearly two hundred posts long without just sounding like yet one more bleakly generic jackass who has utterly failed to comprehend the original point of the thread. So far, you’ve pretty much failed on both counts, and you communicate in a style better suited to MySpace and Blackberries than to interesting discourse.

Nonetheless, my hat is off to you. Gwennie’s offerings are clearly perfect for you, and vice versa. Nighty-night.

By: callum

callum — Sun, 26 Nov 2006 09:28:41 +0000

actually i’ve got the IQ of 129, and im a Gwen fan, and onto my litaracy…i use text talk on blogs and forums because its faster and most people can still understand it so u can take your ”Ur” and, pardon my french, shove it where the sun don’t shine ^^

By: ms_xeno

ms_xeno — Sun, 26 Nov 2006 09:10:15 +0000

This seems as good a time as many to state that I just finished a two-week temp gig in which Gwennie’s bubblegum was wafting gently through the air at least twice a day. I can honestly say that I’d rather be dipped in corn syrup and tied to a hill of fire ants than be subjected to it ever again. To claim, as Crys T and others did above, that her main audience is teenagers is a grave disservice to the average teenager, at least some of whom must possess IQ’s greater than that of a secondhand pleather ottoman.

Once again, however, I commend her ever-vigilant posse of not-quite-ready-for-literacy players who keep bumping this thread, thus giving me yet one more chance to treat Gwennie-poo with all the respect she deserves. Which would be none, basically. Her music is over-produced, inch-deep crap. Her voice sounds like cyclamates escaped from a toxic time capsule, and she operates from some black hole that is clearly stunting the intellectual growth of her legions of fans;None of whom appear to have actually read the thread before rushing breathlessly to the defense of their born-again barbie doll idol. “Ur” computers need to be taken away, pronto, Gwenfans, and given to somebody more deserving. A roomful of monkeys hard at work on their Shakespeare impersonations, for instance…

By: callum

callum — Sat, 25 Nov 2006 19:49:00 +0000

Sorry but i think most of u are really sad. So Gwen stefani has tried to go for a new look and styled herself around the popular new craze of harajuku. AND WHAT shes only trying to boost her career and shes making the fashion more well known, is there a real problem in that? some of you have said that its offensive that she has the harajuku girls with her in her videos as ‘’submissive” asian woman, and that if she was a man there would be ”uproar”. I’m sorry but in videos such as holla back girl they hardly act like her accessories or submissive and they’re wearing american street clothes which look just as slutty as the harajuku clothes they and gwen wear, she also acts like friends with them and they dont seem so submissive when they’re shouting along with gwen in the videos!!! and offcourse they’re gonna look submisssive compared to gwen because shes the singer and its her videos!!

also men in ‘american’ music videos are always seen with a haareem of girls with them whatever nationality, and look more like their slaves than the harajuku girls look like in gwens videos, and has there bee uproar about them no….

also the fact that proberbly very few of u are asian and are getting offended is quite weird as the comments ive read from asian ppl dont seem to be really bothered by it and neither do my asian friends so stop trying to be so rightous and overally involved. your just middle class liberals who decide to get bothered by something that has very little to do with you and have a mardy about it just sit back and relax and get botherd about stuff thats either effecting you, your family and friends or your culture directly!!!!

By: alexandra

alexandra — Mon, 11 Sep 2006 07:09:40 +0000

i think it’s admirable that they aren’t judged for how they dress…for this non-comformist style…they are trend-setters..that it’s a shure thing!!!

By: Aaron V.

Aaron V. — Tue, 16 May 2006 22:48:34 +0000

Takes cricket bat and swings it at this thread, a la Shaun of the Dead.

By: ginmar

ginmar — Tue, 16 May 2006 19:39:12 +0000

That comment might go over better, Koy, if you could tell the difference between ‘their’ and ‘there’, not to mention the BLONDE bit.

By: Koy

Koy — Mon, 15 May 2006 01:33:08 +0000

I’m SO unimpressed by Gwennie MISPRONOUNCING the Japanese word for “Cute” at the beginning of her video…
Seems if you loved a Culture of Cute you’d learn to SAY it.
NOT “KU*wa*ii”
“KA*wa*ii”
Difficult? No one stood up and TOLD the blonde?
OR (gasp), perhaps their were no REAL Japanese around…?

By: Crys T

Crys T — Fri, 14 Apr 2006 14:43:30 +0000

Hm, I must then check this all out! I’m in a bit of a musical rut now–well, a rut in general. Maybe something different will cheer me up.

By: ginmar

ginmar — Fri, 14 Apr 2006 13:53:27 +0000

Great, tooth decay or brain decay? Tough choice.