Last Sunday saw around 300 Japanese women in identical blonde wigs take part in an event to counter the supposedly stereotypical western concept of beauty. This was also coupled with those present being urged to develop their own idea of beauty, and the gathering ended with a symbolic removal of the wigs.
A very commendable idea it has to be said, and one that also seems to have struck a chord with the male population. As on closer inspection, the wig wearing woman in the bottom right hand corner appears to be a man.
Lovely says
I hadn’t heard of this event. Kind of interesting though, I didn’t know the West had such power over the hair colour of the Japanese. What exactly was their motivation I wonder..have they been turned down for jobs because they are not blonde? Do the men in Japan only date blonde women? I get the impression that being blonde in Japan would be a handicap rather than an advantage, after all, standing out from the crowd is hardly an admirable trait over there is it?
Hanuman says
What happened to the blonde wigs? Donated to needy drag queens, perhaps? 🙂
midbach says
Funny! I hope that is a man in the picture; either that or a ‘modest’ woman. 🙂
TronDD says
What makes them think they need to rebel against the western stereotype of beauty in the first place?
Lee says
Yeah, I’m not really sure what all this is about. It may have something to do with so many women (and men) having dyed hair. Or there again, maybe not!
And midbach. “Modest” woman, a great phrase 🙂
dzogo says
T-girl?
Kirin says
I think it’s probably more to do with the way that, when you look at Japanese models for clothes and stuff, you often see them made up to look as western as possible (and I think I read something about having plastic surgery to change their eyes), perhaps instilling an attitude that American blonde haired blue-eyed girls are beauty, anything else is not. At least, that’s my take.
Amy says
This event must have been sponsored by Dove- the same commercial showing women throwing their blonde wigs has been airing in Japan and North America for a few months now. All part of their Campaign For Real Beauty.
http://www.campaignforrealbeauty.com/
A commendable message AND a great publicity stunt.
christina baker says
It had to have been for a Dove ad. That is the exact thing they did for a U.S. ad.
Jason says
Yeah, dove for sure.
Minime says
Campaign for real beauty?
I’m already in the hair club for men, thanks.
Twiist says
In regard to the top comment… standing out from the crowd isn’t an admirable trait? have you not seen some of their fashion?! Dude, look at the cosplay trends and such over there and you’ll soon find yourself mistaken I think.. Although I do agree on wondering what the motivation was… great stunt though.
Laura says
Removing the identical blonde hair…..
to reveal identical black and brown hairstyles….
nice
anirin says
wow, i think that’s awesome. a lot of asian women are trying to become beautiful by following western stereotypes (large eyes, pale skin, etc…), like kirin said.
s says
that’s not a man! lol. it’s an older lady, i think. poor lady!
Jude says
In all fairness everyone all around their world have their own standards of beauty if India the lighter your skin and eyes the more beautiful you are, and the same in parts of Africa.
Even people who don’t have televisions in Africa want to change their looks. So I think looking different from what you have currently are really attractive to them.
missy says
hmmm funny, then why do they still use skin whiteners and bleach and get their eyes and noses done??? These countries are the ones obsessed with the western look, thats why no one these actresses and models keep their original looks, this article makes me laugh. One more thing they dont even look good blonde anyway and dont knock people who are. jealous much!
mbell says
Similar to what other people have said, i think that this is about accepting and embracing the uniquely asian features that make Japanese people beautiful. It is true that the famous in Japan often bleach their hair or opt for a more “western look” but that is because genetically japanese people cannot have blonde hair etc. they’re not forgetting who they are necessarily but they are just experimenting like anyone else. since caucasian people can vary in their hair colours no one complains when a blonde person dyes their hair black, no one says that they are trying to be more “asian”. Please stop being racist and calling japanese women experimenting with their looks “fake”. It’s like saying that Americans are superficial because they spray tan themselves when they’re really pale. that would be an unjust generalization of a whole country. comments like that of missy are just uninformed and naive.
Dez says
Some of the comments are dumb.
Here are the facts.
1. This was for a Dove commercial, the Japanese themselves didn’t plan this and all the reading into it some users are doing are just projecting their own naive western perspective. Literally projecting your own ignorance onto Japan and east Asians in general based on an advert made by a western company……………you can’t get more retarded than that.
2. Japanese are generally born pale, most Japanese don’t use skin bleaching (unlike Filipino, Thai etc people). You can blatantly see when a person uses bleach, and most Japanese who are pale are naturally pale, even most Japanese babies are pale. Sorry to break it to you racists, but most Japanese are born pale to begin with (even most Mongolians and northern Chinese are born pale as well).
Also this has nothing to do with wanting to be Caucasian, in China and Japan and Korea the ideal of pale skin is preferred. This originates from their past histories where the ruling class and nobles were all paler people, because they never had to work and spend time in the sun. Thus their unblemished skin was pale and was associated with beauty and purity.
Most Europeans don’t even have the same tone of pale skin as these east Asians, most Europeans have a more pinkish skin tone instead, which isn’t the preferred tone in east Asia.
3. Nearly no Japanese use blue eye contacts, sorry. Lived there for 5 years myself, saw like 2 people with that in all my time there. Japanese instead sometimes use brown contacts, the point of the contact lens is to make the iris appear overall larger and it creates a more cute appearance in the woman. From my experience most don’t use contacts, but most that do use contacts are wearing a dark brown type of contact and the purpose is to make the iris bigger.
4. Various other colours used on anime characters or some young Japanese subcultures are not even colours that even exist in European people, claiming that blue, green, purple etc hair = European just makes you a moron. No humans have these colours, and it was Japan originally which started way back in the 60’s drawing anime stuff with people with these colours.
5. If you don’t understand the culture there, the actual appearance of the people, then you can come to a whole bunch of ignorant and racist perceptions based on western ignorance. Like the one user up there who found out that many Japanese don’t look like the basically propaganda cartoon version of an Asian that he thought Asians were meant to look like, then instead of accepting that he thought of people in an exaggerated way and was wrong, instead he just decided in his head that these people must be trying to be Caucasians because they don’t look like some 45 degree eyed, yellow skinned, bucked tooth propaganda image he had of Asians.
This shows the mass amount of ignorance in some western people.