Lauren Chen@TheLaurenChen
Today was the Cherry Blossom Festival here in Nashville, which is an annual event that celebrates Japanese culture 🇯🇵🌸
After spending 3 months in Tokyo last year, I was curious to see what a Japanese-inspired event would look like in America.
The first thing that I noticed, however, was that other attendees were disproportionately overweight white women. And among the people dressed up for the event, they were almost exclusively obese white women with colorful hair.
This struck me as strange, because this is not what the average person in Nashville looks like. Despite being in the south, Nashville is a relatively lean city. I definitely think that the Cherry Blossom Festival itself was attracting a specific type of crowd.
And I find that so curious, because these overweight, unkempt women were clearly fans of Japanese culture and esthetics, but they simultaneously couldn't have been further from embodying Japanese beauty.
Japanese women tend to be lean, feminine, well-groomed, reserved, and modest. The women at the Festival were basically the complete opposite of that. It seemed like they thought they could just put on a costume and emulate Japanese culture, but what they failed to realize is that Japanese culture is considered so beautiful and desirable because it's disciplined. It's precise. It's intentional.
From the looks of it, these are not values that any of these women hold dear. The image of a tattooed, 300 pound woman, with unbrushed hair, spilling out of an anime cosplay outfit is... jarring, to say the least, because it goes against so much of what makes Japanese culture Japanese.
It seemed like they believed Japanese culture was beautiful, but didn't understand that that beauty took work and a certain character to achieve. Work they weren't willing to do, and a character they weren't interested in aspiring to.
And the fact that this type of woman is so interested in Japan is also strange to me, considering that Japan possesses a lot of the same qualities that these women likely complain about when it comes to America.
Japan is an ethnonationalist country with strict immigration. They are tough on crime. They are socially conservative. They value social cohesion and personal responsibility.
These qualities are all strengths when it comes to Japan, but these women, once more, all but certainly oppose such practices in America, failing to understand that Japanese success isn't an accident. It's specifically thanks to these policies.
In any case, I don't share these thoughts to body shame anyone, but rather to note how, despite their apparent interest in Japanese culture, western liberals are essentially its polar opposite. Esthetically, politically, and socially.
