obsession with the cute

My friend Anna shared a Vanity Fair article with me last month about the "culture of cute" that is sort of taking over the American cultural norm. The article traced the origins of the cute-mania to Japan, where the obsession with cute things has been a prevalent part of their culture. The author, Jim Windolf, didn't seem that enthused by how this trend is trickling out of the East and into the Western world. However, I think this is because he is a man and therefore probably has an innate fear that he will one day wake up and find his home decorated entirely with Hello Kitty products, courtesy of his wife.

So while I found the article to be an intriguing look at the globalization of culture, as an Asian female, this is not exactly news. Did I grow up eating Asian pastries shaped like fish and other assorted wildlife? Yes. Who had a change purse embossed with a cartoon hamster? Right here. Was I once bestowed by my Taiwanese cousin with a full set of 40 (yes, 40) Hello Kitty magnets that she had collected from the local 7-11 because she had 3 full sets and wanted to get rid of one? You betcha. In fact, my high school boyfriend once told me that all Asian women liked things that were "small, cute and useless." (I retorted that that was why I liked him. Jerk.)

Most of my childhood was spent in this cute-crazed world before it really caught on in the States. If you knew me in my childhood years, you will also know that I was a chubby, shy, be-spectacled ball (literal, not figurative) of awkwardness. Perhaps because of this, I was very reluctant to embrace the "cuteness" that I felt like I really could not relate to. Also, a sort of inner feminist screamed at me to be taken seriously as a smart, capable person, and not as some sort of adorable, airheaded bimbo that people liked because she was pretty, or whatever. (Yes, even as a 10-year-old, I knew that I couldn't trade on my looks, and so developed an intense aversion to people who did. It's still kind of a complex.)

In the last few years, it's really become acceptable for full-grown women--and men--to publicly proclaim things to be cute and still be taken seriously. At first, I was really kind of turned off to how all these so-called mature figures were openly squealing over Winnie the Pooh or a particularly adorable dish shaped like a giraffe.

And this was the shocker...it really did make me happy to see something that is cute. Like in a bubbling, breathless, kind of hyperventilating sort of way. But I wonder, is this sort of reaction one that is learned, because it's become socially acceptable to ooo and aahhh over a helpless turtle trying to eat a tomato or the stealthy Ninja Cat? Am I really happy to see a baby bunnie, or is it because I'm expected to, as a living and breathing young woman? Was I becoming an Asian--well, now American, too--stereotype?

I don't know what this really means about me, but all I know is, this picture got me through most of the hellish 4th quarter that was Medill:


And no, I'm not ashamed to admit that it's now the tiled background on my work computer. Stereotypes be damned, I love this baby bunnie! [Squeal!]