Is this dress offensive?

[freezingpompoms]

This dress was bought in America 20 years ago. It's a Disney Small World dress that depicts differing nationalities. It's age 2-3.

Someone said they didn't think it's very PC so I just want to check. I'm happy to be told either way.

@Calphurnia88 "Rejecting 'slanted eyes' is a very dangerous phenomenon, because it is the rejection of aesthetic pluralism," Dr Luwei Rose Luqiu from Hong Kong Baptist University said."
Quote from the same article.

Okay, your comment about brown haired nordics, was clearly intended to be ridiculous and make us sound hysterical. But it’s literally the exact point that’s being made here: by portraying national identity in this narrow way, by using stereotypical representations of who can ‘be’ seen as belonging to a particular community, it’s contributing to a divisive ideology based on an imbalance of power. You can make fun all you like, but did you notice the huge rise of the right in Scandinavia recently? Who build their policies around a rejection of who can ‘be nordic’? Brown and black people in Scandinavia are subject to awful prejudice as a result of these restrictive messages.

@Angelicat so any depictions of national dress should be abandoned?

The model was responding to criticism about an advert that she appeared in.

I happen to agree with her response to the criticism, but I can see the difference between an advert for snack food featuring a real-life model, and a character depicting an outdated, westernised charicature of an East Asian person. Something Mr Disney certainly had tendencies toward.

Does the fact that several people of East Asian heritage on this thread have said the character uses racially offensive stereotypes not give you pause for thought? Or do you only listen to the non-white opinions that (you think) back up yours?

No, of course not. (although there is a separate discussion to be had about the concept of national dress but let’s not go there now). The point is that if you’re going to represent the people who live in a country, you need to represent diversity within a country. Not just one uniform symbolic image to stand for all people.

@Angelicat if there is nothing wrong with national dress, is there anything wrong with a skirt depicting different national dress outfits?

If a skirt had to depict every single possible ethnic & cultural variant existing in a country, the garment would be huge!

Exactly. Which is why the design of the skirt is a problem.

Not just national dress but also any racial characteristics, just to be on the safe side.

@SweetcornFritter and yet at the same time we want to see more diversity...

and yet we want to see more accurate diversity

(just a quick fix for you) 👍

What is inaccurate about depicting people from different countries having different eye shapes?

We are literally going round in circles, this has been answered so many times already. It’s almost like you don’t actually want to discuss, just argue and point score.

Why do you think Japanese people (for eg) all have the same eye shape? And why do you think that eye shape is a line? Have you ever seen any Japanese people?

As @Angelicat said, round and round in circles to defend something that most people it represents think is archaic and uncomfortable.

You can be cancelled for merely describing an Asian girl’s eyes as almond shaped so it’s safer simply not to talk about it at all. They’re just eyes ok?

@BewareTheLibrarians i didn't say that all Japanese people have the same eye shape.
However, my understanding is that the average Japanese eye shape is narrower than the average western eye shape (happy to be contradicted).

In my view, if the skirt had depicted a child in Japanese national dress with eyes the same shape as the children with western eyes that would have been more problematic.

‘Western eyes’ 🤦‍♀️

@Q2C4 This is a bit random, but I googled famous popular Japanese and British actresses, and screenshotted the first results. I don’t know if actresses count as a good “average” group but maybe it’s an older/stereotyped image that people have in mind when they think about average eyes?

@Angelicat would you prefer "western children with eyes"?

Personally I find articles like this very sad. Eyes can be beautiful whatever the holders ethnic background www.cosmopolitan.com/uk/beauty-hair/news/a28801/japanese-teens-are-using-sticky-tape-to-create-western-eyes/

@Q2C4 It is really sad, as is the amount of British and American women who have nose jobs (which doesn’t mean all British and American women have big noses, does it?) use fake eyelashes to make their eyes look bigger (which doesn’t mean they all have small eyes), who contour to make their faces look slimmer, who use fake tan to darken their skin which doesn’t mean they’re all ghostly pale), I’m sure there’s more. Natural beauty is beautiful, variety is beautiful.

Again, this is the point people are trying to make: things like this makeup trend exist because people feel defined by deeply ingrained stereotypes with negative connotations. So they aspire to look like a stereotype that’s portrayed as more positive, desirable etc etc. Which wouldn’t happen if there wasn’t a historical and ongoing massive power imbalance in society.

Nothing wrong with it at all..This parent needs to stop enabling this nonsense by putting his her adult sensible head on..

Why on earth did you wake up a zombie thread from months ago to say something firstly wrong and secondly, repeatedly countless times during the 400-odd posts?

Why on earth did you read it? DOH!!