Musings on the end of an era...
Feb. 26th, 2006 08:32 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
elfsThere was a brief decade of time-- call it 1985 through 1995-- when Japanese girls brought up in their native country were exotically beautiful. Most of them had been born twenty years earlier and had grown up on a diet that was not yet Westernized, but the attitudes towards naked women were uniquely Japanese-- somehow patriarchial, excessively protective, and exploitative all at the same time. The result is a body of erotica that is as innocent as Playboy desperately wanted to be, as attractive as a unicorn is supposed to be, as alien to Americans as the moons of Jupiter and as suggestive as a Von Stuck artshow. The women were youthful, sylphlike, thin without suggesting deprivation, small without arousing hints of pedophilia. It was, all things considered, a kind of golden age.
Since 1995, however, "oriental porn" has devolved completely. The body styles the photographers are looking for are the same ones Western photographers are seeking, and the diet the developed Pacific Rim enjoys is as full-fat and nutritious as that eaten in America. The sylphs and nymphs have disappeared into history, replaced with tall, full-bodied divas strong of thigh and heavy of boob, as massive and toned as their genes and personal trainers can make them, indistinguishable from their American and European counterparts-- and that includes the discovery of plastic surgery. They may as well be American girls but for their slight upturn of eye and darker hue of skin. Onsen photoshoots are done more for the kitsch than with any sense of legitimacy.
One of the threads running in rec.arts.sf.written this week is "Fear of a Beige Planet," where story writers show how all of the races have merged into a giant melting pot. Sometimes, one wag points out, such writers try too hard and come up with ridiculous multicultural names like "Alberto Fujimori," "Desmond Tutu," and "David Suzuki." (The local NPR affiliate has a Jazz program director named Alicia Hashimoto, come to think of it.)
I think it doesn't take much in the way of cross-cultural marriage. Cross-cultural diet has done plenty to take us to a world where everyone, at the very least, expects to look not too different from their neighbor.
Since 1995, however, "oriental porn" has devolved completely. The body styles the photographers are looking for are the same ones Western photographers are seeking, and the diet the developed Pacific Rim enjoys is as full-fat and nutritious as that eaten in America. The sylphs and nymphs have disappeared into history, replaced with tall, full-bodied divas strong of thigh and heavy of boob, as massive and toned as their genes and personal trainers can make them, indistinguishable from their American and European counterparts-- and that includes the discovery of plastic surgery. They may as well be American girls but for their slight upturn of eye and darker hue of skin. Onsen photoshoots are done more for the kitsch than with any sense of legitimacy.
One of the threads running in rec.arts.sf.written this week is "Fear of a Beige Planet," where story writers show how all of the races have merged into a giant melting pot. Sometimes, one wag points out, such writers try too hard and come up with ridiculous multicultural names like "Alberto Fujimori," "Desmond Tutu," and "David Suzuki." (The local NPR affiliate has a Jazz program director named Alicia Hashimoto, come to think of it.)
I think it doesn't take much in the way of cross-cultural marriage. Cross-cultural diet has done plenty to take us to a world where everyone, at the very least, expects to look not too different from their neighbor.
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no subject
Date: 2006-02-27 04:56 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-02-27 06:07 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-02-27 07:00 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-02-27 06:32 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-02-27 07:11 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-02-27 06:22 am (UTC)One wonders if this is photographer choice rather than an artifact of diet?
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Date: 2006-02-27 06:46 am (UTC)Just look at the size/weight distribution in the USA, and compare it to that of people employed as models. And the plastic surgery factor, especially the apparently automatic boob jobs in the porn business, can hardly be atributed to diet.
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Date: 2006-02-27 06:47 am (UTC)I always liked the old Blue Mink song :Not as much diversity perhaps, but I like coffee! :)
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Date: 2006-02-27 07:22 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-02-27 11:26 pm (UTC)Either your kids and kids kids are going to assimilate into each other's cultures (and shock both sets of grandparents), or else you are going to have ethnic enclaves.
And ethnic enclaves that last more than 2 generations are a BAD IDEA, for reasons that should be either obvious, or if they are not obvious, I've gotten far to tired of explaining to explain again.
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Date: 2006-02-27 11:51 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-02-27 11:27 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-02-27 05:24 pm (UTC)Not unreasonable...
Date: 2006-02-27 07:41 pm (UTC)One of the things I look forward to, during a possible future "alien contact" scenario, is that whatever they are, suddenly races will [hopefully] seem like a near meaningless catagorization, next to species...
Falbert