Cuteness in China

Marcus, Aaron; Kurosu, Masaaki; Ma, Xiaojuan; Hashizume, Ayako

doi:10.1007/978-3-319-61961-3_3

Cited by 3 publications

(10 citation statements)

References 12 publications

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“…This article investigates the aesthetic efficacy of linguistic–semiotic enregisterment, in a collaboration with material design and embodiment, of fashion clothes on Chinese social media within modern cute material culture. Dating back as early as the Han Dynasty, the Chinese traditional notion of cuteness, namely kě ài (可爱), is comprised of two senses: (a) respectable, the use of which has currently become obsolete; and (b) lovely, which has been readjusted into a modern context (Marcus et al, 2017). Notably, the modern conceptualization of cuteness in China has been under the great influence of Japanese kawaii material culture (Chao, 2017; Marcus et al, 2017).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Dating back as early as the Han Dynasty, the Chinese traditional notion of cuteness, namely kě ài (可爱), is comprised of two senses: (a) respectable, the use of which has currently become obsolete; and (b) lovely, which has been readjusted into a modern context (Marcus et al, 2017). Notably, the modern conceptualization of cuteness in China has been under the great influence of Japanese kawaii material culture (Chao, 2017; Marcus et al, 2017). As a globalized popular culture (McVeigh, 2000), Japanese kawaii material culture essentially eulogizes cute things, people, behaviours and attitudes characterized by infantility, delicacy and prettiness (Kinsella, 1995; McVeigh, 1996, 2000).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…China has witnessed a similar cultural preference and mass commodification of a cute aesthetic (Chao, 2017; Marcus et al, 2017). The shared, and even universal, fondness for cuteness, according to Lorenz (1971), is attributed to Kindchenschema , or ‘baby schema’, as an innate human predisposition to care for living creatures with babyish features.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…According to Chao (2017: 37), Chinese cuteness ( kě ài ) is more than ‘a simple replication of kawaii.’ With an inherent undertone of coquettishness (Chao, 2017; Zitong, 2013), the Chinese modern perception of cuteness extends into a confluence of kawaii, moe (萌 in Chinese) and Baozou subcultures with enriched connotations (Marcus et al, 2017). More specifically, while ‘kawaii’ is popularized in Japan as a relatively commonplace reference to cuteness of almost any sort, the term, according to Marcus et al (2017), is almost exclusively used by females in China as a restricted depiction of small things and girls. By contrast, moe , a Japanese term originally used to describe one’s deep affection for a female character in animations, comics and games (ACG), has been taken up predominantly by Chinese males to describe cute girls in general.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Compared with its Japanese counterpart, the uptake of moe in China has witnessed a restriction of its users and an extension of its referents. Varying significantly from kawaii and moe , Baozou, a Chinese substyle of comics created by grassroots through a rough bricolage of online pictures, represents an alternative and demotic genre of ‘cuteness with negative properties’ (Marcus et al, 2017: 67). For its grassroots application and flexibility, Baozou constitutes an important source of Chinese online memes.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 4 more Smart Citations

Enregistering cuteness of fashion clothes on Chinese social media

2021

Journal of Material Culture

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In the context of cute material culture, this article focuses on the production of valorized cute aesthetic in fashion clothes being sold on Chinese social media. Through corpus-enlightened empirical case studies, the article demonstrates how the baby-talk register converges with the material design and embodiment of clothes to synergically affect the cute materiality of the clothes at issue. With special attention paid to discursive practices of enregisterment, the study tries to recalibrate the existing biased hermeneutics of cute material culture that largely reduce cute clothes to material immediacy and consumerist passivity. The study sheds light on the collegiality and complementarity that enregisterment shows for embodiment and material design in the production of material aesthetics, and by doing so enriches the understanding of materiality within clothing material culture in general.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 3 more Smart Citations

Enregistering cuteness of fashion clothes on Chinese social media

2021

Journal of Material Culture

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Representing cervical cancer in a government social media health campaign in China: moralizing and abstracting women’s sexual health

Zhao

Bouvier

2023

Visual Communication

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This article analyses an award-winning film produced as part of the Chinese government’s ‘Healthy China Initiative’ to increase awareness of cervical cancer among young women. The film was designed to be social media friendly, using a more accessible popular style, and it achieved over 350 million views on Chinese social media. The aim had been to shift away from a tradition of more formal, authoritative public information content. Using multimodal critical discourse analysis in the broader tradition of critical health communication studies, the findings support other critics of Chinese public health information in relation to women’s reproductive health. Despite the accessible style, the authors find a highly conservative ideology of womanhood, where the actual nature of cervical cancer, caused by the very common Human Papillomavirus, is obscured in a highly moralized message about sexual abstinence. The film also represents a view of Chinese health services that glosses the difficulty of access for many, as well as public concerns about corruption and clientelism.

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English and Spanish Adjectives That Describe the Japanese Concept of Kawaii

et al. 2023

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The word “kawaii” is ubiquitous in contemporary Japan and has spread to the rest of the world with the dissemination of Japanese pop culture. Although the word is conventionally translated in English as “cute,” its meaning is more nuanced than “cute,” and it is used for a wider variety of objects. The primary aim of this study was to determine if Spanish has an equivalent to the word “kawaii”; additionally, similarities and differences across Japanese, English, and Spanish were explored. An internet survey was conducted in which respondents from Japan ( n = 486), the United States ( n = 365), and Argentina ( n = 303) were presented with various photographic images that were often described as “kawaii” in Japanese and asked to write three adjectives to describe the images. They were also instructed to rate their affective states when looking at each image in the valence and arousal dimensions. The results showed that babyish objects (e.g., human, animal, and toy) were most frequently defined as “kawaii” in Japanese, “cute” in English, and “tierno” in Spanish. The average frequency at which these words were used as primary adjectives was higher for “kawaii” (57.5%) than for “cute” (26.8%) or “tierno” (22.4%). All of these images were associated with positive and moderately-aroused affective states similarly across all three countries. The present study demonstrates that the adjectives “kawaii,” “cute,” and “tierno” can be used almost equivalently for describing babies and pets, but that the Japanese adjective “kawaii” encompasses wider categories than the other two words.

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Cuteness in China

Cited by 3 publications

References 12 publications

Enregistering cuteness of fashion clothes on Chinese social media

Enregistering cuteness of fashion clothes on Chinese social media

Representing cervical cancer in a government social media health campaign in China: moralizing and abstracting women’s sexual health

English and Spanish Adjectives That Describe the Japanese Concept of Kawaii

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