Thanks to Sudy at A Womyn’s Ecdysis for posting about the costumes.
One time this summer, I met a few friends at Union Station after work to get dinner and a movie. While waiting them, I walked through the “market” area and found that it brimmed of cheap cultural appropriation [taking something that is not yours]. The stock consisted of plastic butterfly hairpins that were supposed to look like jade, wooden dream-catchers with tags explaining their mystery, polyester handbags with good luck symbols on them, and Made-in-China African prints. I had the same feelings then that I did when I saw Mickey Rooney playing a Japanese landlord in a Breakfast at Tiffany’s. I had the same feelings as I do as now. It wasn’t WHAT the trinkets were made of but more of the fact that people didn’t appreciate or understand that they were treasures. What were once family heirlooms were now being mimicked for a few dollars.
This costume, as well as the China Woman costume, Sexy Geisha Glam Costume, and Oriental Delight costume that Angry Asian Man links at his site, not only appropriates culture but perpetuates [plays into, continues] the stereotype that Asian women are submissive, seductive delicate little things. By oversexualizing Asian women, our patriarchal society objectifies [making a person into an object] Asian women and creates a standard that is often unobtainable. According to TIME Magazine, 1 out of 10 Korean adults have undergone cosmetic surgery for non-medical reasons. Not to make any statements about plastic surgery or another culture but the relationship between this high percentage and concepts about body image is something to think about.
And what makes it EVER okay to *try on* another race or culture (hopefully this where you can see how disability simulations fit into this.) Do people wake up and think “Hey! I think I want to be Chinese today! Hmm maybe Ghanaian tomorrow?”
5 Comments
October 24, 2007 at 10:54 pm
My 14 year old twin daughters are Asian American (adopted from Vietnam) and when they were little, people always wanted to see them as Asian dolls. Which cracked me up because the girls completely upended all those stereotypes only wanting to wear boys clothes. Which was fine by me.
October 26, 2007 at 11:39 am
I’m not sure; what do you think about dressing up in drag? Are there similarities between dressing up in drag and dressing up as someone from another culture, or as a person with a disability. I think so. Judith Butler argues that dragt shows us all that gender is in some sense, performative. It not something essential or innate to the person but rather something we enact and herein lies it subversive force. To stretch the analogy - to dress up today as someone from Ghana is not to assume the identity of a person from Ghana, as if one could do that, but rather to recognize that race is also performative in some sense. That race is not biological, and thus, it has its performative aspects. Given that race has come to signify inferiority, then stressing the performative aspects of race might be a good thing. Also, I think the work by recent theorists, such as Margrit Shildrick, that has stressed the performative aspects of disability, is very interesting. Do we not perform cultural ideas of what it is to be disabled? Is it useful to claim that there is something about disability identity that is innate and unique, and only mine. If so, then how?
Sandra
October 27, 2007 at 12:02 am
Hey Sandra, I don’t want you to think I’m ignoring your comment but am going to have to take some time to put my thoughts into words.
Thanks for commenting.
October 27, 2007 at 12:23 pm
Here, here! Yesterday, the mayor of Philly (John Street) rode around all day in a wheelchair just to “relate” to disabled people. Lovely huh? Are you still handing out those cookies? HEHE.
October 28, 2007 at 3:14 am
As for the Drag Part, well there is a female side of me that has to come out. She is too big to stay locked up. Of course, my feminine side is a strong woman who takes control of her world and says what she wants.
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