More dangerous than ignorance.
Life is almost unbearably exciting right now, so it's obviously time to address something totally unrelated.
There's a tumblr blog called Your Fave Is Problematic (I don't know why "is" is capitalized). It briefly got a lot of attention last year, and then people probably got bored and I suppose the owner turned out to be a bit of a jerk or something. I don't even know who most of the people featured are and I don't care. But for laughs I did go through the archive to see if I'd recognize any names. Zooey Deschanel is on the list, and I know she's an actress of some description, though if anyone asked, I couldn't name any of her roles without the aid of IMDb. Her entry is rather stupid in a lot of ways, most of them being of the baffled "so this is what passes for 'problematic' these days?" -variety. Like "Repeatedly plays 'Magic Pixie Dream Girl' roles which are roles that define the character as being there soley for the male character’s pleasure and is shown as white woman (sic)", which I don't even understand the meaning of. Like, is "being shown as a white woman" a separate issue from "repeatedly playing MPDG roles"? Is "being shown as white" an issue with Deschanel, or does it somehow make MPDGs more problematic? With this level of copy editing, who the fuck knows. But what I take issue with are the two pictures of Deschanel wearing a dressing gown or whatever, with the caption "Appropriating the kimono".
First of all, kimono are not like bindi or war bonnets. For the most part they have no religious or cultural significance. Like sushi or manga or woodblock prints, kimono are a product that you can buy and enjoy, and wearing a regular kimono the worst faux pas you're likely to commit is to be either over- or under-dressed (and having kimono boob or gorilla arms or both, but that's more a matter of taste). Obviously, there are kimono with very specific purposes, like mofuku (mourning kimono) or shiromuku (wedding kimono), and wearing these out of their intended context would be rude and ill-adviced, but not more so than wearing Western garb for the same purposes. It would also be an indiscretion to wear kimono in some avant-garde way, like oiran-style with the shoulders and cleavage exposed, but again, it wouldn't be any more problematic culturally than wearing Western formal wear in a way that exposed your naughty bits. These would also be rather unlikely gaffes for anyone to make.
Bottom line, wearing a kimono is so much less problematic than calling a dressing gown a kimono.
I checked out that tumblr ages ago, sometime in mid-2013 I think, and I've been periodically thinking back to this ever since. Another gem brought to you by my need to not talk about my life.
There's a tumblr blog called Your Fave Is Problematic (I don't know why "is" is capitalized). It briefly got a lot of attention last year, and then people probably got bored and I suppose the owner turned out to be a bit of a jerk or something. I don't even know who most of the people featured are and I don't care. But for laughs I did go through the archive to see if I'd recognize any names. Zooey Deschanel is on the list, and I know she's an actress of some description, though if anyone asked, I couldn't name any of her roles without the aid of IMDb. Her entry is rather stupid in a lot of ways, most of them being of the baffled "so this is what passes for 'problematic' these days?" -variety. Like "Repeatedly plays 'Magic Pixie Dream Girl' roles which are roles that define the character as being there soley for the male character’s pleasure and is shown as white woman (sic)", which I don't even understand the meaning of. Like, is "being shown as a white woman" a separate issue from "repeatedly playing MPDG roles"? Is "being shown as white" an issue with Deschanel, or does it somehow make MPDGs more problematic? With this level of copy editing, who the fuck knows. But what I take issue with are the two pictures of Deschanel wearing a dressing gown or whatever, with the caption "Appropriating the kimono".
First of all, kimono are not like bindi or war bonnets. For the most part they have no religious or cultural significance. Like sushi or manga or woodblock prints, kimono are a product that you can buy and enjoy, and wearing a regular kimono the worst faux pas you're likely to commit is to be either over- or under-dressed (and having kimono boob or gorilla arms or both, but that's more a matter of taste). Obviously, there are kimono with very specific purposes, like mofuku (mourning kimono) or shiromuku (wedding kimono), and wearing these out of their intended context would be rude and ill-adviced, but not more so than wearing Western garb for the same purposes. It would also be an indiscretion to wear kimono in some avant-garde way, like oiran-style with the shoulders and cleavage exposed, but again, it wouldn't be any more problematic culturally than wearing Western formal wear in a way that exposed your naughty bits. These would also be rather unlikely gaffes for anyone to make.
Bottom line, wearing a kimono is so much less problematic than calling a dressing gown a kimono.
I checked out that tumblr ages ago, sometime in mid-2013 I think, and I've been periodically thinking back to this ever since. Another gem brought to you by my need to not talk about my life.