Cute things in my life

My bedroom is actually my cutest thing currently. Everything is white, pink, and gold, and i have a lot of stuffed animals and little cute decorations. I'm very into cute things, especially creepy-cute things (which i have none of in my room.) I spent most of my life being anti-cute/anti-pink, but this past year I decided that I wanted to do what I do best and cover my life in cute. I really relate to the part of the Kinsella article when she talked about handwriting. The one student said the characters are hard to read, but look really cute, so she uses them anyway. My room is hard to maneuver now because I'm very messy, but if I mess up my room it's no longer cute. So i rarely ever "use" my room because of wanting the aesthetic.

The cutest item i own is a gudetama head towel I bought at a Sanrio store, also arguably the cutest store I have ever been inside. Sanrio is such a powerhouse in the cute world because of the empire they've built up. It's interesting because the addition of characters to everyday objects makes a consumer more likely to buy the object, despite a hike in price. The towel I bought was about ¥ 2545, while a towel without the character on it would have probably been around ¥1000.


Lolita culture in Japan is interesting to look into, and the Kinsella article sheds some light onto why it was so popular. There are many different "types" of Lolita, ranging from goth to creepy and everything in between. However, there is a base form of Lolita that is simply frills, curly hair, large puffy dresses. Kinsella says that a lot of the cute style in Japan is based on foreign influence, like European. With the dresses in mind, you can see this Victorian influence

Kinsella discusses the shear volume of the love for kawaii culture in early 1990. 71% of people between 18 and 30 reported liking kawaii people, like the group pictured above. There are also toned down versions of cute fashion culture in Japan, such as this ad:

Cute and childlike are very closely related in Japanese culture, but not seen as a bad thing. In American culture (and potentially other western cultures) cuteness is associated with childishness, which is seen as inherently bad. We had talked in class briefly about play and how fucked up public schooling is because of play, and this is actually the reason why. Play is seen as childish in America, while in Japan they seem to let their minds play all throughout adulthood.