#who also conveniently has a very stereotypical (and incorrect) name

[lemedstudent2021]

Have you heard about Carbombya, a canon Middle Eastern country in Transformers?

Boycott Transformers.

Transformers: Bigots in Disguise

TIL what Carbombya is, and that its population is 4000 people and 10,000 camels, and frankly i dont know if i should laugh or cry.

apparently the franchise has an extensive history of being racist and promoting problematic stereotypes, this is merely one example.

i honestly have no idea what the people who greenlighted this bs were thinking, especially since their audience is kids 6 and above.

[girlyholic]

A Needlessly Thorough Counterpost to Cybr.Grl’s Video on Jirai

So this was brought to my attention, as I have been subscribed to cybr.grl on Youtube for about a year. And when I saw the notification for a video on Jirai, I was very intrigued!

And it took very little time for my intrigue to turn into exasperation.

So, so much of this video is misinformed, and is far too charitable about Jirai as a concept, which is reckless and dangerous. I was also informed it seems that any comments disputing or disagreeing with the information in the video are being deleted.

This should be an open discussion, and when it is not allowed to be one is where I start to have a problem. Putting up a video on something that has literally killed people and then tuning out anybody who tries to bring this up is inexcusable, if that is truly what’s going on here.

However, I don’t think that everyone in this video has no idea what they’re talking about and are flat out wrong, rather, they’re going off of personal experiences and information that has some basis in reality. However, the information about Jirai being presented here either has more context to it, or is easily debunkable, and that is what I aim to achieve with this post.

BIG TW for this post, as I will be mentioning the many harms of Jirai, such as self-harm, prostitution, and both of these topics in relation to minors.

This video is entirely built upon the assertion that the Girly style is inherently tied to something negative due to its association with Jirai, which I have debunked multiple times on this blog already. To briefly reiterate why Girly gets conflated with Jirai, a viral dressup challenge about emulating the “landmine girl” stereotype linked the term to the fashion and brands started using it for marketing purposes over the popularity of said challenge. Funny enough, most of them have gone back to referring to the style as Girly again since the hype and intrigue around the term has gone down.

Fact is that Girly is the established name of the fashion, and has been for many, many years. The term Girly as its name can be traced back on the internet as far back as 2001.

In fact, here is a Wayback Machine link to an old blog for the prominent Girly brand Liz Lisa, where the clothes this brand sells are referred to as being Girly,  in the year 2006.

I have made a whole post on this “Jirai for clicks” phenomenon using Lafary as an example, but brands do this as well, for all of the same reasons. Some brands, such as DearMyLove, have only doubled down on their usage of Jirai and Ryousangata, and it unfortunately looks like this specific marketing ploy, which is aimed towards young girls in order for them to buy these products, is here to stay.

All of this indicates that Jirai is not a style on its own, but a fad, which is provable time and time again by brands and influencers going back to using Girly when it’s convenient for them.

Simply put, the truth is that there is only the “landmine” lifestyle, as it is described in the video, and there is Girly fashion. There is nothing inherently negative about the fashion.

The specific substyle of Girly that is associated heavily with landmine girls is called "Dark Girly".

But the specifics of the attitude of “Jirai” as a “style” being presented as something negative in the video is a point that’s worth examining, because it isn’t completely incorrect.

Chiara alludes to the idea that if you were to “wear Jirai” in Shinjuku, you would be more likely to get called out like a prostitute in the street if you were to hang around at night. This is true, and her reasoning behind this is also true, when she mentions the fact the landmine stereotype came from Kabuki-cho.

But the thing that is extremely glossed over in this video is how serious this aspect of the stereotype is and where it specifically came from in the first place.

This next section is where I will be discussing the topics in the trigger warning at the start of this post, so please proceed with caution.

This type of clothing became aligned with the landmine stereotype due to many incidents in Kabuki-cho of primarily underage, self-proclaimed landmine girls who were known to prostitute themselves, publicly self-harm, and sometimes even commit suicide in high numbers. Here are two articles on this exact subject as it relates to the landmine lifestyle that I have posted before.

“Even self-harm is a trend now?” - Discusses a rise in the commodification of self-harm scars as being cute, and the lengths some youths in Kabuki-cho have gone to achieve this “pien”, sickly cute aesthetic.

“An increase of "suicide cases" in Kabuki-cho, in it's background are teens who depend on numbers” - Discusses an increase of public rooftop suicides in 2021 in this area, mostly among youths and prostitutes who feel as though they are not popular or worthy enough to live.

Which brings me to another point that I would like to discuss, as it comes up as a derogatory term in these two articles, is the attitude towards Menhera that is on display from the two guests on this video.

Quite frankly, the assertion that Menhera is the dirty word here, and that Jirai is in any way preferable, is nonsense.

The only thing that’s true here is that Menhera can be abused in a derogatory manner, but it never was the intend behind its creation. Menhera has an extensive history as a positive term that mentally ill individuals came up with for themself that has since been twisted into being a derogatory term by neurotypicals. More on that here, if you are interested in a lengthier explanation of why these two terms are completely different things, and how Menhera is a mental health awareness subculture.

You are not winning by going “Menhera bad” and glossing over all the harmful aspects of Jirai as if they wouldn’t exist or get embraced within the community in Japan. Menhera may have a negative public meaning due to social stigma, but let’s not pretend that suddenly makes Jirai the good one.

Because at least the original intend of Menhera as name of a mental health community is still visible to this very day. Meanwile all we have of Jirai is the usage as an insult as well those who use it in a self-affirming manner for their self-destructive habits.

The main point I wish to end on is that the associated style, Girly, is harmless.

The thing I hate the most about this video is how it is spreading the idea that you might have to worry about a horrifying culture of romanticized self-harm being associated with your frilly clothes, as if that’s just how it is.

Going by the Shinjuku example, this is certainly a real thing that is already being assumed. Which is unfortunate on so many levels.

That doesn’t have to be how Girly is being seen in the public eye, but it sure as hell will be if people keep trying to claim that Jirai is only the name of a fashion and that Girly doesn’t exist.

[cartoonessays]

The Problem With The Simpsons

As of this writing, the most recent episode of The Simpsons is “No Good Read Goes Unpunished”, in which they briefly offered a response to comedian Hari Kondabolu’s documentary The Problem With Apu.  The documentary used the Apu character as a jump-off point to discuss the marginalization and the extremely reductive view of South Asians in popular media, particularly drawing on his experience as an Indian-American forced to reckon with a greater population who didn’t view his cultural heritage beyond Apu behind the checkout counter at the Kwik-E-Mart saying “thank you, come again”.

In “No Good Read Goes Unpunished”, the B-plot involves Marge rediscovering a beloved book from her childhood called The Princess in the Garden, only to realize how racist and imperialistic it was in an attempt to read it to Lisa.  Marge later attempts to make edits to the book in order for it to fit current-day sensibilities, or in Marge’s words, “It takes a lot of work to take the spirit and character out of a book, but now it’s as inoffensive as a Sunday in Cincinnati”.  Lisa quickly recognizes that Marge’s changes to the story sanitize the whole plot and calls it out, leaving a frustrated Marge to ask what she’s supposed to do.  Lisa breaks the fourth wall and replies:

Something that started decades ago, and was applauded and inoffensive is now politically incorrect. What can you do?

As she says this, the camera pans down to a portrait of Apu with the caption “don’t have a cow!”.  Marge responds by saying “Some things will be dealt with at a later date,” with Lisa quipping “If at all” as they both stare directly in the camera.

A lot of the response The Simpsons has gotten to this has been negative.

And for good fucking reason too.

This response to The Problem With Apu is bullshit; I’m not gonna mince words.  These writers are better than this and these writers know they’re better than this.  Pulling out the banal “PC gone mad” canard is the refuge of a comedic hack.

First of all, The Problem With Apu highlights how Apu Nahasapeemapetilon’s conception as a character is based off of various South Asian stereotypes that include but aren’t limited to his voice being performed by a white man (Hank Azaria) doing an impression of another white man (Peter Sellers) doing an Indian accent, his job being at a 7-Eleven type of convenience store, and the fact that his name “Nahasapeemapetilon” is just foreign sounding gibberish and not actually a name.  Kondabolu and various other South Asian actors and comedians discuss how growing up they were bullied and picked on by being called “Apu” and his catchphrase “thank you, come again” was used against them as a slur.  They also talked about how the roles they get offered for shows and movies hardly go beyond stereotypes and cliches that draw a lot of parallels to Apu.  And the Simpsons writers responded to all of this with a dismissive and tired ass whine about political correctness.

It’s particularly disingenuous of them to use Lisa as their mouthpiece to voice this response, considering her statement is a dismissive retort of her whole existence as a character.

The season 5 episode “Lisa vs. Malibu Stacy” is all about Lisa taking the makers of Malibu Stacy dolls to task over its reinforcement of sexist stereotypes, noting how popular and influential the dolls are to girls around the world.  A lot of striking parallels to Kondabolu’s documentary about Apu, aren’t there?  The show didn’t treat Lisa’s concerns about Malibu Stacy’s sexism as trivial or a non-issue; she was framed as the hero in this episode.  Lisa’s statement in “No Good Read Goes Unpunished” is a complete 180-turn from “Lisa vs. Malibu Stacy”.

Most of the negative critiques that have been written about “No Good Read Goes Unpunished” have focused specifically on moments where Lisa and Marge break the fourth wall.  But I want to discuss the framing around that moment in the episode more because it is also terrible and makes that particular moment even worse in context.  In Marge’s changes to the book she grew up with, she changed the protagonist from a little girl who happily revels in Britain’s colonization of South America to a “cisgender girl who fights for wild horse rescue and net neutrality”.  Let’s see how many liberal strawmen are in this sentence.  There’s a strawman related to the language used by transgender rights activists and allies, another strawman related to animal rights, and are they seriously framing net neutrality as something you can write off as some shallow identifier of politically correct liberals?  Are there a lot of people who brush off the net neutrality issue as political correctness?

And once Marge began telling her re-edited story, Lisa was quick to point out that all the re-edits stripped the story of the emotional journey the protagonist goes through.  First of all, how the hell would Lisa know about the protagonist’s emotional journey or how the racial stereotypes play into it?  She hasn’t read the damn book!  Second of all, this is a false dichotomy the episode sets up to give weight to its dismissal of The Problem With Apu.  Indulgence in racist stereotypes aren’t an inherent function of character arcs in stories.  Why does Marge specifically say “It takes a lot of work to take the spirit and character out of a book, but now it’s as inoffensive as a Sunday in Cincinnati”?  Her objection in the first place was the book’s racism, not that it had spirit and character.  Why are they now framing racism and pro-colonialism as “spirit and character”?  Perhaps The Princess in the Garden is some kind of allusion to The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and controversy surrounding its banning/censoring in various schools and libraries?  If that is the case, the rest of the episode does not make that clear.

In fact, when I watched the full episode, I was surprised to see the rest of B-plot actually admonished the book’s racist stereotyping.  The first part of this plot sets up its racial and ethnic stereotyping as really over-the-top and mean-spirited (and giving no allusions of how it related to an emotional arc later in the story).  The last part of this plot mocks historians of The Princess in the Garden’s author who act as apologists for her racism through ridiculous reasoning that they don’t even really believe (they call her racism “self-consciously ironic protest against [the author’s] own oppression” due to her being a lesbian).  So on top of this episode’s response to The Problem With Apu being built from various strawmen, dishonestly framing a dichotomy between creating a character with an emotional arc and not promoting racial stereotypes, and just being really heavy-handed (they both stare directly at the viewers for crying out loud), it was completely in contrast with the rest of the plot.

I can’t read this as anything else but a petty “fuck you” to Hari Kondabolu.  And that is really sad.  These writers are better than this.

Or maybe they’re not better than this.

The Simpsons has always been an overwhelmingly white show with very little representation of people of color.  In fact, the only characters of color I can think of that has been explored beyond their on-the-surface personality quirks in the show’s almost thirty year tenure are Apu and Carl in only one episode.  This show hasn’t really grappled with racism in any of their episodes outside a character making a small quip about it once in a blue moon or “Much Apu About Nothing” (although that was more about xenophobia than racism).  It seems to be an issue the writers of the show have never been comfortable in tackling.  They nonetheless open themselves up to scrutiny by ignoring it, especially when they conceive a foreign character based on stereotypes they find funny (Simpsons writer Dana Gould admitted to that in Kondabolu’s documentary).

I’m not even necessarily saying that they should kill off Apu or something like that.  I like Apu and I personally wouldn’t want to see him go (but hey, I’m not Indian).  But I would have liked to see the writers honestly reckon with the stereotypical character they created and how the decades-long ubiquity of the show has helped shape the broader collective view of South Asians in media.

Instead they chose to respond like this:

And it’s not only beneath them, it’s pathetic.

P.S. This episode offers much better insight on the debate between artistic freedom vs. calling out objectionable content in media anyway.