Posted in Festivals, Ishikawa, Photography, Rural Life, tagged dekayama, festival, float, Ishikawa, japan, matsuri, May, Nanao, photography, Seihakusai, spring on 2013/05/13 | 1 Comment »
Held in Nanao, Ishikawa pref., every May, the Seihakusai Festival (青柏祭) features three enormous floats that are said to ward off evil monkeys. (There’s lots of good information in English on Experience Kanazawa.) The Noto region of Ishikawa is famous for its summer festivals, but they’re not just kiriko (huge lantern) festivals.
Behold the dekayama:
Posted in Ôoku, Culture, Gender, Manga, tagged alternate history, Arikoto, Aso Yumi, Ôoku: Tanjô, female sexuality, Gender, gender expression, genderswap, Gyokuei, Iemitsu, J-drama, Kasuga, Masakatsu, Matsudaira, Ooku: The Inner Chambers, Oooku, Sakai Masato, samurai, shipping, Tabe Mikako, Tanaka Koki, Yoshinaga Fumi, Ōoku on 2013/05/04 | 1 Comment »
First of all, a bit of (old?) news from the entertainment world: Kanno Miho, who played Shogun Tokugawa Tsunayoshi in the film Ôoku: Eien, and Sakai Masato, who played Arikoto in the drama and Emonosuke in the film, registered their marriage on 2 April. おめでとうございます！May your work in excellent gender-based dramas lead to you happiness. (Sources: Oricon, Tokyo Hive)
Source: Oricon
Posted in Advertisements, Gender, Visual Culture, tagged advertisement, beauty product, collusion, culture, Dove, Dove Real Beauty Sketches, fail, feminism, intersectionality, patriarchy, sexism on 2013/04/20 | Leave a Comment »
Dove’s “Real Beauty” Campaign‘s latest attempt to engage consumers has gone viral, and you’ve likely seen some of the criticisms about it. The video “Real Beauty Sketches” depicts a group of women being asked to describe their physical appearance (faces) to an FBI profile artist who couldn’t see them; afterward, the women were described by strangers, including each other. The punchline is that the drawings on of the women based on their own descriptions are far less conventionally attractive than those based on others’ descriptions, and the tagline is “You’re More Beautiful Than You Think.”
Not buying it.
From Dove’s Youtube page:
Florence from Dove Beauty Real Sketches.
Women are their own worst beauty critics. Only 4% of women around the world consider themselves beautiful. [Ed: Where are your citations, Dove?] At Dove, we are committed to creating a world where beauty is a source of confidence, not anxiety. So, we decided to conduct a compelling social experiment that explores how women view their own beauty in contrast to what others see.
Several other writers have already taken the campaign to task. (more…)
Posted in Culture, Gender, Media, tagged 16-bit Sirens, 50 Shades of Green, anime, Antonella Inserra, CONset, Cosplay =/= Consent, Doctor Who, Erika Moen, fake geek girl, female representation, feminism, Feminist Pax Enforcers, Feministe, geek, geek girl, genderqueer, idiot nerd girl, Lindsay Ellis, manga, Mark Oshiro, Mark Reads, marketing, nerd, nonbinary sexuality, PAX East, scifi, sexism, strong female characters, The Mary Sue, Tomb Raider, video games, Yvonne Brill on 2013/04/11 | Leave a Comment »
Posted in Culture, Gender, Cooking, tagged Gender, Japanese food, food, feminism, division of labor, bento, foodwork, housework, Emily Matchar, NPR, cute on 2013/03/21 | Leave a Comment »
A Bento is Not As Big As the World
Reblogged from I’ll Make It Myself!
In the lead-in to Carlsen’s and Turner’s “In Japan, Food Can Be Almost Too Cute To Eat,” there is a slideshow showcasing the cuter side of Japanese food: tofu character goods, a kyaraben (character bento), and images of Anpanman in cartoon and pancake form. The authors mention that food presentation is part of the culture of cute, but instead of an obsession with food presentation dictating the creation of characters and mascots like Anpanman, I would actually say that Japan’s love of cute things dictates the creation of anthropomorphized food. I don’t just mean in terms of kyaraben, I mean that the regular onions I buy at the grocery store have an anthropomorphized onion on the bag. So do my eringi mushrooms. So do my tomatoes. Visual presentation of food is definitely a part of Japanese food culture, and creating a cute obento for a child to eat is part of that culture, but the food presentation didn’t create the characters necessarily.
Posted in Art, Culture, Gender, Visual Culture, tagged agency, art, Asian art, C.B. Liddell, discrimination, female artists, female representation in art, feminism, japan, male gaze, minority art, representation, sexism, The diverse works of Asian women artists, The Japan Times, Tochigi Prefectural Museum of Fine Arts, women, women artists, women in art, Women In-Between: Asian Women Artists 1984-2012, women's bodies on 2013/03/14 | 2 Comments »
This piece also appeared in Feministe on 1 April 2013.
One of the most striking scenes in the 2012 miniseries version of Ford Maddox Ford’s Parade’s End is one in which suffragette Valentine Wannop takes refuge in an art museum during a rally. While she is quietly admiring a painting of Venus, another woman enters and slashes the painting with a cleaver, shouting, “What are you all gawking at? Do you think that is all women are good for?”1
As someone with a deep love of art, I was alarmed as Valentine was. I do not believe in the destruction of art, but what the stand-in for Mary Richardson said stuck with me. Consider the status of women in the art world: often considered the “muse,” rarely the artist; lauded as the pinnacle of beauty but having no worth otherwise: the Venus forever looking in her mirror, the object of the (male) gaze, not the subject of her own agency. Should a gallery or museum try to strive for the inclusion of women artists (and artists of color, queer artists, and so on), there may be criticism of ignoring the masters, so-called “female privilege,” and the desire for a gender-blind meritocracy that simply does not exist at present. If you were wondering what such an article might look like, look no further than C.B. Liddell’s “The diverse works of Asian women artists,” a special to The Japan Times.
Posted in Advertisements, Consumer Culture, Cooking, Gender, Visual Culture, tagged advertising, beer, Bitch Beer, craft beer, feminism, Gender, I'll Make It Myself, objectification, sexism, South Austin Brewing Company, visual anthroplogy on 2013/03/02 | Leave a Comment »
Reblogged from I’ll Make It Myself: I Did Not Order My Beer with a Side of Sexism“
Source: coffeefirstalways
While I’ve regrettably come to expect national-brand beers to perpetuate the stereotype of beer as a man’s drink and insult women in the process, what about craft beers? Caroline Wallace of Bitch Beer recently discussed this in her article “How to alienate female beer drinkers in one easy step.”
Bitch Beer is a Austin, Texas-based beer blog written by a group of women. Bitch Beer’s name is similar to that of Bitch Magazine/Bitch Media:
We went with the name Bitch Beer because we want to disprove the old adage that women aren’t really beer drinkers. We’re evoking a name often given to sugary, low-alcohol content beer substitutes like Smirnoff Ice or Mike’s Hard Lemonade to prove that, from a stout to an IPA, these so-called bitches can drink any damn beer they please. You heard us, every beer is a Bitch Beer.
Wallace starts with a comparison of two beer ads seen at a local roller derby event… [full article]
Posted in Advertisements, Consumer Culture, Gender, Language, Visual Culture, tagged B*tch Media, beauty products, Bitch Media, Cibu International, Orientalism, petition, racism, sexism on 2013/02/13 | Leave a Comment »
An update on the petition for Cibu to stop using Orientalist names for their products from (the one and only) Bitch Media:
Image via Bitch Magazine.
Wash that Racism Out of Your Hair! After Protest, Cibu Brand Promises to Nix Racist Hair Product Marketing.
Using racial stereotypes for laughs in marketing is nothing new. Even these days, many people don’t seem to notice the casual racism of some marketing campaigns—especially when their culture isn’t the one being used as a punchline.
Case in point: Cibu International’s line of hair products with names like “Miso Knotty Detangler” and “Geishalicious Shampoo.” Many of Cibu’s product names lump together food and martial arts references from different Asian cultures. But the worst are those that play on creepy, fetishizing stereotypes about Asian women, such as “Miso Knotty Detangler” and “Geishalicious Shampoo.” In one image originally posted on Cibu’s Facebook page, a naked Asian woman is pictured on her knees, hands behind her back, eyes downcast with the words “Seduced by Geishalicious” written underneath.
Posted in Consumer Culture, Culture, Gender, Language, Media, Visual Culture, tagged Asian-inspired, beauty products, Cibu International, Miso Knotty, Orientalism, petition, racism on 2013/01/29 | 7 Comments »
Image via Are Women Human, via EthnoConnect. Quote: Helen Kim, “Asianized Asians.”
Last month, the excellent blog Are Women Human? called out the beauty company Cibu International over their “Asian-inspired” line of products–not the typical “cherry blossom perfume” and “seaweed face mask” but products with names like
“Miso Knotty Detangler,” “Geishalicious Shampoo,” “Take Out Clarifying Shampoo,” “Shang High Mousse,” “Spring Roll Hydrating Cleanser,” “Ancient Veil Oil Mist,” “Hi-Ya! Keratin Reconstructive Conditioner,” “Washabi 3-in-1 Conditioning Shampoo,” and “Dry Kwon Do Dry Shampoo”– are based on the cultural misappropriation and reduction of Asian culture to a handful of puns, food references, and simplistic and Orientalist stereotypes. (from the petition)
“Miso Knotty Detangler.” Via Cibu International.
Posted in Ôoku, Culture, Gender, Manga, tagged Arikoto, Aso Yumi, 男女逆転大奥, drama, genderswap, Iemitsu, KUBOTA Masataka, manga, Ohoku, Oooku, Sakai Masato, Tabe Mikako, Tokugawa, Yoshinaga Fumi on 2012/12/26 | 8 Comments »
After Ep. 3, my will to watch this show waned a lot. Fortunately, the drama picks up more in this episode, and there are points I was willing to overlook or accept for the sake of adapting this manga for TV. Arikoto’s cross-dressing scene in Ep. 3 was not one of them, so I’m still a bit sore about that.
Warnings: spoilers for the manga and drama, including some from later episodes/chapters.
More Ôoku here.
