One of the problems with the sexualisation debate is that is so white and middle-class. As Australia turns towards China and Asia, and as Asian immigration increases, it is quite natural that we begin to see the influence of Asian culture. Asian Pop is starting to be noticed in Australia and SBS now runs a program dedicated to Asian pop music. I’ve already mentioned the way that Japanese pop culture selects certain Western themes (and memes) and twists them in unique ways. And whilst the moral conservatives panic about the influence of Black and Latino music on white, middle-class girls (Beyonce, Shakira, Rihanna, etc) they remain strangely silent about the Asian influence.
Of course, most of the concern around sexualisation is about girls so I thought I’d draw attention to the way boys are presented in Asian pop. In short they are feminised and juvenilised. It is almost the opposite of Black and Latino machismo. Male performers are ‘cute’ and androgynous. A good example is Korean boy-band D-NA. Anyway, food for thought.
Bliss is a young hippie girl with an extraordinary, untamed mind: a guitar prodigy, a synesthete, but can she tame her wild talent?
Greenfields Site.
After plenty of interaction with Asian people of all origins, I’ve noticed that the Korean and Japanese young men are very feminised, with special attention paid to hairstyles. Japanese men, especially, whom I’v noticed here and there, are fond of a hairstyle which is big and bulbous-shaped at the top, narrows down at the neck, and then flares out again at the bottom of the neck. I find parallels here with the hairstyle for which Elizabeth Taylor is noted. From the discussions I’ve had about it, male beauty in the region is considered to be a much more (from a western perspective) feminised beauty. Quite an interesting concept.
Yes, indeed. Asian cultures are interesting for their inversion of a number of Western aesthetic assumptions. Another is the ‘childification’ of adults, both men and women. Whilst the West is concerned with the adultification of children, the Asian aesthetic emphasises the opposite. The Japanese word for this is ‘kawaii’, meaning cute.