![]() ![]() What? There are already living Harajuku girls and boys ( as in from Harajuku & in the style)! This subculture is based on a high degree of gothy weirdness combined with the Japanese penchant for cuteness (called kawaii). (emphasis added - and it is interesting to note thatthe skin color can be changed, but not the features) ![]() ![]() You can even print out your own paper dolls to decorate your room or greeting cards featuring your Harajuku creation. Customize their eye and hair color, even their stage wardrobe, before printing out the dolls and bringing them to life. Turn you and your friends into Gwen and her Harajuku Girls. ![]() I though others had covered it all, until I recently saw a click-through ad for a partnership between Stefani and HP to create my own customized Harajuku girl. As MiHi Ahn puts it in Salon: “Gwen Stefani neuters Japanese street fashion to create spring’s must-have accessory: Giggling geisha!”. The basics of this story are not new: general cultural commodification combined with racialized doll-silence. In music, many have come before - from Elvis to Madonna. Gwen’s co-optation (or misappropriation) of Japanese style, specifically the street styles of the Harajuku district of Tokyo, may be a specific example of the use of another culture’s cues and objects to make money for one’s self but not the originating culture. Susan Scafidi’s summary of Gwen Stefani’s post-No Doubt career at Counterfeit Chic is incisive precisely because the lack of originality shown. “Love the culture? Write a song about it. ![]()
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![]() ![]() ![]() After that date the authority of Aristotle and Ptolemy was overturned and artistic conventions challenged, as was Arabic astronomy and cartography.įlorence and Venice of the 15th century attracted traders from across the world. Gavin Menzies makes the startling argument that a sophisticated Chinese delegation visited Italy in 1434, sparked the Renaissance, and forever changed the course of Western civilization. A stunning reappraisal of history is about to be published. Until now, scholars have considered that the Italian Renaissance - the basis of our modern Western world - came about as a result of a re-examining the ideas of classical Greece and Rome. But his research has led him to astonishing new discoveries that Chinese influence on Western culture didn't stop there. In his bestselling book 1421: The Year China Discovered the World, Gavin Menzies presented controversial and compelling evidence that Chinese fleets beat Columbus, Cook and Magellan to the New World. ![]() Now he presents further astonishing evidence that it was also Chinese advances in science, art, and technology that formed the basis of the European Renaissance and our modern world. In his bestselling book 1421:The Year China Discovered the World, Gavin Menzies revealed that it was the Chinese that discovered America, not Columbus. ![]() ![]() ![]() As I sat down on a stoop, looking out at the church across the street while the guy next to me wolfed down a sandwich and the girl on my other side craned her neck around, looking for her friend, I was nearly vibrating with excitement. Of course, the closer I walked to Thalia Hall I could also pick them out by the way they wrapped around the corner, leaning against the stonework and talking to friends. As probably the most boring-looking person who would end up waiting in line to see Slow Mass, Gouge Away, and headliner La Dispute (I’d just come from my day job, sue me), I could pick out fellow concert-goers by the metal-band font on their shirts and the dye in their hair. ![]() Tuesday, April 23rd, was a nice, cool day, not rainy as the forecast had promised the day before: a lovely day to guess who exactly on the Pink Line toward 54th and Cermak was getting off at the 18th Street stop based on their clothes. ![]() |