HOLY MOLEY! boy you better brush up on your amateur japanese

and it took me this long to figure out....
Ganguro, for those who don't know, is/was (i'm not sure about its popularity now) a fashion trend in Japan in which girls overly tan their faces (probably with some really heavy bronzer), dye their hair orange or blonde (though multicolored hair seems to be catching on) and (usually) wear extremely noticeable white eye (and sometimes lip) makeup.  Outfit-wise, there are different types of ganguro (for example plush animal footsie pajamas/ kirugumi ) but mostly they wear loud, colorful clothes with cutesy accessories (and apparently sarongs?)

                                                         

 first (c) alis-anime's blog, second and third (c) widelec.

Excuse me if some of my information is incorrect.  Y'see, although my brain stored some information on ganguro (due to my japanese street fashion obsession.  another story for another day) I'm not extremely knowledgeable in this specific subculture (I confess I had to do some google-ing...).  This is not gonna be some post explaining to Westerners some asian fad (there's a bunch of these posts all over the web), just an observation/revelation that was made during my US History class.  Ironic huh?

So how does this exactly connect with US History?  Well, during our discussion of 1920's culture (by the way, BEST ERA IN AMERICAN HISTORY EVER!), the topic of blackface came up.  Well more like one kid asked if some black guy was used 'blackface' (well, although it was mostly white actors that used the method, black actors had their skin darkened with tar to look blacker), then my teacher went into a brief history of blackface and then ended up with the japanese subculture.  Then my mind stopped abruptly for a second and rewinded a little.  Was she talking about....GANGURO???  GANGURO WAS A MODERN FORM OF BLACKFACE? (which became obvious when I just recently researched the topic.  gan= face [apparently], kuro= black. gan+ kuro= ganguro) And that's when I went into a rambling spitfire of my limited knowledge of the topic (aka shouting something along the lines of "You mean the ones that have the really tan faces? And really white makeup?" sounding like some geek).

Before you go on saying "Hold on a sec! Are these asians a bunch of racists?!" this form of 'blackface' (unlike the original's blatant political incorrectness) is actually a form of flattery.  How? The Japanese have an uncanny affinity towards America.  Or things that seem 'American'.  And for some reason (according to my history teacher), these chicks somehow related African Americans to being "Americans" (in the words of my history teacher they even wore "ghetto clothing").  Since an ethnically Japanese person isn't usually born with dark skin they did the next best thing: imitate it by buying mass consumption of bronzer and integrating heavy tanning to their routines.  And Voila!  A trend is born!

~zeeta

p.s. how do you like them apples?  a little bit of (rather amateur-ish) sociology go along with your healthy breakfast of apple jacks!

p.p.s. did I ever tell you I'm interested in sociology?

p.p.p.s. and did I tell you my sense of humor is a bit strange?