>>I'd qualify what you say here first by
>>saying that it's not teenagers' bodies but adolescent bodies and, moreover,
>>the girls' adolescent body works rather differently in most social contexts
>>than the boys'.
>
>Most likely, though Calvin Klein may have changed it somewhat, for better
>and worse. And what of _Titanic_ and Leo DiCaprio? _My Own Private Idaho_?
>_Macho Dancer_?
I still think there are substantial differences. I don't know _Macho Dancer_ though, what's that?
>In the context of Japan, if you read classic works of 'shoujo manga' by
>Yamagishi Ryoko, Hagio Moto, Yoshida Akimi, etc., you'll see that the
>(homo)eroticization of adolescent male bodies is a point of departure for
>the (fantasy) work of girl culture.
Well I've mostly read/worked with Takeuchu Naoko's stuff, where the girl's body is far more important than the boy's, although I'm interested in Ramna 1/2 as well, which is rather different. There are others as well, but I'm trying to stay focused on something widely available in translation, which is one of the reasons why Sailormoon & Co.
>>>On a somewhat positive note, 'shoujo' + 'shonen,' when used by girls
>>>themselves, may be figures of resistance--resistance toward gender-defined
>>>roles hemmed in by Work and Home.
>>And this is fascinating because you're right and yet shoujo is not
>>resistance in the same way as girl is in predominantly Anglophone cultures.
>>There are important continguities, but it's not the same and that is where
>>I am really very interested.
>
>I could continue this discussion, but how much (or how little) do you or
>other listers know about Japan, its language, its history, its cultures,
>etc.? I'd hate to be a native informant for left orientalist cruising.
Well cruising, no. Left, we could argue about that. Orientalist -- very possibly, in a way. I'm a little familiar with these things, that's all. I did a major in Japanese as an undergraduate (which pretty much taught me ways in which I don't speak Japanese -- I can buy things over the phone), and my sister lived in Tokyo with her family for some time and I visited. I would never pretend to do, for example, 'Japanese Studies'. I don't do that, I do girls (among some other things) -- and thus the possible and evident differences in ways of knowing 'girlhood' in Japan and in Japanese are important to me.
...
>A difficult thing is that an emphasis on diversity and specificity can also
>be an exercise in orientalism. One of those aporias, no?
I think, to be more direct about my interest, that both Anglophone girl culture and studies of global girl culture appropriate and construct 'oriental' objects as an alien yet familiar pop which can explain 'Western girlhood' in a range of different ways, but always necessitating a presumption that girlhood is translatable across cultures. I think this is a form of 'orientalism'. It is also true that a similar imaginary coherence is often attached to 'Asian-ness' and 'Japanese-ness' in Japanese cultural production, but I object to thinking of that as orientalism (that seems to be done quite a lot lately), which I think should be reserved for those discourses and representations which employ Asian-ness as an imaginary coherence which conceals hierarchies and ambivalences. This does apply I think to the image of Asian-ness which now appears in girl culture studies as an index of authenticity (you know -- see my appropriation, admire it now) and, with particular reference to Japanese girl culture, a symbol of fetishised innocence.
I don't think I'm asking you to play native informer, though as I said I asked you about this because of your name. The only way this seems wrong to me is insofar as 'Angloceltic' culture is so normalised as to mean no-one's going to request similar information of me because of my name. Because I am outside of these cultures I do always take opportunities to discover new directions through the materials I'm using. And I am using them, to talk about how Japanese culture is used in English-spaking contexts and how Anglophone ideas of girlhood permeate global markets. I accept it's possible this is a form of orientalism.
I think it's impossible to avoid translation and homogenisation when comparing different cultures, but I am interested in whether I can take my version of feminist cultural studies to japanese girls conceived within the globalised frame of girl culture. Oh and worse, perhaps, I also think this cross cultural comparison (which is of course between more than two cultures) might offer something to my analysis of Anglophone girl culture — certainly a kind of Orientalism, but one which I find both unavoidable (because there is no other position from which I can speak) and not necessarily hierarchical. Girl culture fascinates feminists precisely because it is available as an index of what girls are becoming now. The 'problem' of applying feminism to girl culture and girls in Japan which many critics invoke, might be used I think to raise some questions about the ease with which 'we' apply feminism to girls and girl culture sanctioned by a belief that we are looking at the same culture.
Now I am losing focus. Far too tired. But this 3 post a day thing is really draining. Either you put it all in one post or fall behind. Is there a word limit too?
Catherine