14 ms·

In the East Asian country where my family came from and many of my family still live, and in the neighboring East Asian countries where I've lived for so many y

by SiVal 6y ago

In the East Asian country where my family came from and many of my family still live, and in the neighboring East Asian countries where I've lived for so many years, drawing their own eyes as "slanted lines!" is commonplace. (gasp! look at me! Can everyone see how much this offends me? Oh, the humanity! I'm having the vapors! can all you fashionable westerners whose opinions are actually the only ones that matter to me see how sensitive I am?) East Asians don't have any problem presenting themselves to their own children this way, nor do they shy away from drawing big, exaggerated noses on westerners. Western cartoonists often caricature western noses likewise, which doesn't seem to trigger these sensitive westerners at all. It's almost as if they're not actually bothered by it--just like their East Asian counterparts. It's almost as if their outrage depends less on actual hurt feelings and more on how much of a payoff they calculate they might earn from Those in Charge Whose Opinions Actually Matter.

boomboomsubban 6y ago
It's also common for East Asianers to get plastic surgery to "westernize" their eyes, as generations of Western imperialism has warped their idea of beauty about their own eye shape. They may not be notably offended by such slit eye drawings, but they are still damaging.
- rayiner 6y ago
  That line of thinking is incredibly patronizing and paternalistic. When white people do something because they think it looks good, it’s free choice. When non-white people do something because they think it looks good, it’s the “damaging” consequence of “western imperialism.” It’s like how white people think they invented colorism, even though the preference for fairer skin in women exists throughout the pre-colonial historical record in India, Africa, and Asia. (As a dark skinned person whose half white daughter came out darker than him, I applaud the trend away from fairer skin as a beauty standard! But white people thinking they invented the beauty standard to begin with is self-centered and paternalistic: https://quillette.com/2019/02/13/the-origins-of-colourism/ https://quillette.com/2019/02/13/the-origins-of-colourism/ We had colorism in India long before white people.)
  - mc32 6y ago
    It doesn’t make sense. Whites can tan or not tan at will to their detriment (melanoma). Japanese used to have a stigma related to being tanned as it represented manual labor. Not being tanned meant you didn’t work like a peasant. In western society oddly being tanned was associated with having leisure time to tan. All in all ‘not tanning’ was all around better than foot binding as a status marker. Now, in Japan you see two situations people who want to look untanned and others who want to look ultra tanned (really dark make up). I’m sure this will make these ultra sensitive types go into a tailspin. Now in South Asia there is a tendency for middle class women to lighten their skin tone. Is that good, bad? I dunno. That should be up to them. To me it’s no different from other make up or getting hair transplants or nosejobs or other cosmetic surgery. But some people want to jam their preconception on other people’s freedoms.
  - boomboomsubban 6y ago
    >When white people do something because they think it looks good, it’s free choice. When non-white people do something because they think it looks good, it’s the “damaging” consequence of “western imperialism. White people engage in other forms of plastic surgery because various media has told them a certain form is the most beautiful. The difference here is that Western media has clearly spent over a century villianizing certain with Asian traits.
  - nindalf 6y ago
    It’s interesting that you mention colorism in India. The British were not the first group of people to rule India. There has been a history of thousands of years of migration from Central Asia to both India and Europe. These people had light skin. They became part of the ruling class of the places they migrated to. In India that meant dark skinned Dravidian natives were ruled by the light skinned upper classes or castes. As a result of minimal intermarriage, these Central Asian genes are found mostly in “groups of priestly status”, ie, Brahmins. This led to the standard of beauty becoming ingrained. There’s other factors as well, in that it’s a status symbol for some families to make their women stay at home rather than work. Not having to work in the fields means you don’t get tanned, making such people appear more beautiful by this standard. Side note, I’d like to apologise to the Indians who believe that they’re the original inhabitants of the country and that “others” (ie, Muslims) are “invaders”. However, notwithstanding your hurt feelings, you still gotta face facts. Source - A new study squelches a treasured theory about Indians’ origins. The Aryans did not come from India; they conquered it (https://www.economist.com/asia/2018/04/05/a-new-study-squelches-a-treasured-theory-about-indians-origins https://www.economist.com/asia/2018/04/05/a-new-study-squelc...)
- mc32 6y ago
  Those eye representations are evident in many kinds of East Asian art, including wood prints and paintings centuries old, before exposure to the West. Wonder if Classical Japanese art like this[1] will get banned? Interestingly lots of Manga and Anime go the other way and give people vertical eye shapes (buggs bunny eyes). [1] https://spokenvision.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/Utamaro-Two-Beauties-with-Bamboo-770x1234.jpg https://spokenvision.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/Utamaro-...
  - boomboomsubban 6y ago
    It's not their use alone that is damaging, it's their use to make them into stereotypical evil characters.
    - mc32 6y ago
      I don’t see Seuss making them into evil characters. I do see woodcuts using the same eye rendering for demons and other underworld characters, but I hope those don’t get banned by a foreign culture because it thinks it misrepresents its own people. At this point people are on a veritable ‘witch-hunt’ looking for their witches and waiting for Bradburys Firemen to come burn them.
      - boomboomsubban 6y ago
        >I don’t see Seuss making them into evil characters He was making anti-Japan propaganda, there's no doubt he made them into evil characters. Proof http://keyeventsofworldwar2.weebly.com/uploads/1/9/6/4/19640425/689958544.jpg http://keyeventsofworldwar2.weebly.com/uploads/1/9/6/4/19640...
        nec4b 6y ago
        Do you have a problem with anti Japan war propaganda?
        boomboomsubban 6y ago
- swader999 6y ago
  And western people often get nose jobs.
- bobthechef 6y ago
  Can you support this claim about imperialism (also, "common" is a rather huge exaggeration)? I hear it made all the time in a hand wavy way with no substantive demonstration. Frankly, it sounds rather condescending, as in: East Asians couldn't possibly find the kinds of eye shapes more common among European stock more beautiful unless they were conditioned into believing that in some way! Seems rather dismissive.
  - boomboomsubban 6y ago
    Western imperialism is an obvious factor in the East Asian countries this is popular in, such as South Korea and Taiwan. There's no concrete proof this is a result of imperialism, but the differences between the counterparts North Korea and China provide limited evidence it's the cause. As for common, the estimates I can find show between 1/5th and 1/3rd of South Korean woman receive double eyelid surgery.
AnIdiotOnTheNet 6y ago
> In the East Asian country where my family came from and many of my family still live, and in the neighboring East Asian countries where I've lived for so many years, drawing their own eyes as "slanted lines!" is commonplace. Yeah, and black people commonly use the N-word among themselves too. That doesn't mean it isn't offensive for me to use it.
- mc32 6y ago
  What? Now only a kind of person can draw in that style? This is beyond ridiculous. What if the character is laughing and their eyes are virtually shut? Sorry, Ray, you need to draw the eyes, I can’t. Ok, now I can draw the hair.
  - Person5478 6y ago
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KVN_0qvuhhw&t=159s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KVN_0qvuhhw&t=159s
  - AnIdiotOnTheNet 6y ago
    How do you feel about blackface? It's not a thing you can do anymore in theater or movies. It's not like no one is allowed to ever wear black paint on their face or anything, it's a matter of portraying a specific kind of person in an offensively stereotypical manner.
    - aww_dang 6y ago
      https://www.google.com/search?q=robert+downey+jr+blackface https://www.google.com/search?q=robert+downey+jr+blackface In "Tropic Thunder" (2008) Robert Downey Jr. famously wore blackface. Of course I doubt he could do it today, but is that because it would be genuinely offensive, too controversial or both?
      - scottious 6y ago
        When Robert Downey Jr. did it, the context mattered a lot. It was a commentary race. There was an actual black actor along side him that was basically spelling it all out for the audience. They were using blackface as a way to talk about race issues rather than the offensive way it has been used in other contexts. Whether or not that kind of thing would fly today is a different question. I certainly hope that people could look at things holistically and not just have a knee-jerk reaction to something like this. I'm also interested in what black people think about this, because ultimately that's what matters most.
newacct583 6y ago
I'm going to challenge this. Anecdata may be what it is, but I've never seen any popular artwork from any east asian culture that embraces the slanted eye representation. It just doesn't happen. Asian cultures draw asian people as... people. The kind of ridiculous physical caricature we see in this kind of artwork (slanted eyes and buck teeth on asians, long arms, huge lips and a completely non-representative chimpanzee circle around the mouth on africans, etc...) only makes sense when viewed from outside, in the "look at these strange and alien people" sense. No one drawing themself reaches for tropes like this.
- tomrod 6y ago
  https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ukiyo-e https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ukiyo-e Among other genres. Maybe your mental model of people drawing themselves with "slanted eye representation" is more specific in nature? I haven't seen the other tropes you've mentioned though.
  - newacct583 6y ago
    > I haven't seen the other tropes you've mentioned though. It doesn't strike you as odd that in this whole enormous controversy which has consumed right wing media all week and driven this thousand+ comment thread to the top of HN... ... that no one thought to show you the actual artwork in question, and that you never looked it up for yourself? Seriously, it's pretty bad. Go look.
    - tomrod 6y ago
      > I'm going to challenge this. Anecdata may be what it is, but I've never seen any popular artwork from any east asian culture that embraces the slanted eye representation. It just doesn't happen. Asian cultures draw asian people as... people My prior comment was in response to this gap. With regards to the controversy stirred up by right-wing propaganda, Aesop's fable of the bull and the gnat applies for me. Peace.
- SiVal 6y ago
  Here's some anecdata on East Asian websites: Chinese: https://www.aliexpress.com/wholesale?catId=0&initiative_id=SB_20210305054253&origin=y&SearchText=pucca https://www.aliexpress.com/wholesale?catId=0&initiative_id=S... Korean: https://www.chosun.com/site/data/html_dir/2007/05/25/2007052501049.html https://www.chosun.com/site/data/html_dir/2007/05/25/2007052... Japanese: https://www.irasutoya.com/2018/06/blog-post_724.html https://www.irasutoya.com/2018/06/blog-post_724.html
patentatt 6y ago
Context might matter here. Seuss made lots of propaganda for the us military during wwii, specifically with the intent to dehumanize Japanese people. Which, if you’ll recall, eventually led to an environment where the us government thought it was a good idea to murder hundreds of thousands of Japanese civilians in nuclear holocaust. So when he was drawing these slant eyes, he was drawing on that experience and mindset. I don’t believe it was as innocent as you imply. One source among many: https://www.history.com/news/when-dr-seuss-went-to-war https://www.history.com/news/when-dr-seuss-went-to-war
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- mc32 6y ago
  Yeah they also dehumanized nazis (and Germans in general too, or did you forget?) It’s not like they were known for being chivalrous (Bataan).
  - patentatt 6y ago
    Im not sure what the relevance is here? Trying to deflect with a whataboutism argument doesn’t undermine the position I espoused.
    - tarboreus 6y ago
      It kind of does undermine your position. It shows that you don't really care about the process of dehumanization for purposes of encouraging warlike action, but rather the inherent offensiveness of specific types of images.
  - candybar 6y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internment_of_Japanese_Americans#/media/File:Seuss_cartoon.png https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internment_of_Japanese_America... There's a distinction here between demonizing the enemy you're fighting against and demonizing the citizens of your own country for having a particular national origin. The cartoon here implies that Japanese-Americans (depicted the same way as the Japanese emperor in other cartoons) are traitors. And Dr. Seuss was German-American himself and did not try to imply through his cartoons that German-Americans or Italian-Americans are traitors.
aww_dang 6y ago
>It's almost as if their outrage depends less on actual hurt feelings and more on how much of a payoff they calculate they might earn from Those in Charge Whose Opinions Actually Matter I wonder if _some_ may feel guilt for their own past actions or a historical burden unfairly hefted upon them. Instead of approaching that, it _may_ be easier to externalize and blame others. This _could_ explain the rampant accusations of racism. It is easy to see how this could become a self-perpetuating feedback loop.

by SiVal 6y ago

boomboomsubban 6y ago

It's also common for East Asianers to get plastic surgery to "westernize" their eyes, as generations of Western imperialism has warped their idea of beauty about their own eye shape. They may not be notably offended by such slit eye drawings, but they are still damaging.

rayiner 6y ago
That line of thinking is incredibly patronizing and paternalistic. When white people do something because they think it looks good, it’s free choice. When non-white people do something because they think it looks good, it’s the “damaging” consequence of “western imperialism.” It’s like how white people think they invented colorism, even though the preference for fairer skin in women exists throughout the pre-colonial historical record in India, Africa, and Asia. (As a dark skinned person whose half white daughter came out darker than him, I applaud the trend away from fairer skin as a beauty standard! But white people thinking they invented the beauty standard to begin with is self-centered and paternalistic: https://quillette.com/2019/02/13/the-origins-of-colourism/ https://quillette.com/2019/02/13/the-origins-of-colourism/ We had colorism in India long before white people.)
- mc32 6y ago
  It doesn’t make sense. Whites can tan or not tan at will to their detriment (melanoma). Japanese used to have a stigma related to being tanned as it represented manual labor. Not being tanned meant you didn’t work like a peasant. In western society oddly being tanned was associated with having leisure time to tan. All in all ‘not tanning’ was all around better than foot binding as a status marker. Now, in Japan you see two situations people who want to look untanned and others who want to look ultra tanned (really dark make up). I’m sure this will make these ultra sensitive types go into a tailspin. Now in South Asia there is a tendency for middle class women to lighten their skin tone. Is that good, bad? I dunno. That should be up to them. To me it’s no different from other make up or getting hair transplants or nosejobs or other cosmetic surgery. But some people want to jam their preconception on other people’s freedoms.
- boomboomsubban 6y ago
  >When white people do something because they think it looks good, it’s free choice. When non-white people do something because they think it looks good, it’s the “damaging” consequence of “western imperialism. White people engage in other forms of plastic surgery because various media has told them a certain form is the most beautiful. The difference here is that Western media has clearly spent over a century villianizing certain with Asian traits.
- nindalf 6y ago
  It’s interesting that you mention colorism in India. The British were not the first group of people to rule India. There has been a history of thousands of years of migration from Central Asia to both India and Europe. These people had light skin. They became part of the ruling class of the places they migrated to. In India that meant dark skinned Dravidian natives were ruled by the light skinned upper classes or castes. As a result of minimal intermarriage, these Central Asian genes are found mostly in “groups of priestly status”, ie, Brahmins. This led to the standard of beauty becoming ingrained. There’s other factors as well, in that it’s a status symbol for some families to make their women stay at home rather than work. Not having to work in the fields means you don’t get tanned, making such people appear more beautiful by this standard. Side note, I’d like to apologise to the Indians who believe that they’re the original inhabitants of the country and that “others” (ie, Muslims) are “invaders”. However, notwithstanding your hurt feelings, you still gotta face facts. Source - A new study squelches a treasured theory about Indians’ origins. The Aryans did not come from India; they conquered it (https://www.economist.com/asia/2018/04/05/a-new-study-squelches-a-treasured-theory-about-indians-origins https://www.economist.com/asia/2018/04/05/a-new-study-squelc...)
mc32 6y ago
Those eye representations are evident in many kinds of East Asian art, including wood prints and paintings centuries old, before exposure to the West. Wonder if Classical Japanese art like this[1] will get banned? Interestingly lots of Manga and Anime go the other way and give people vertical eye shapes (buggs bunny eyes). [1] https://spokenvision.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/Utamaro-Two-Beauties-with-Bamboo-770x1234.jpg https://spokenvision.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/Utamaro-...
- boomboomsubban 6y ago
  It's not their use alone that is damaging, it's their use to make them into stereotypical evil characters.
  - mc32 6y ago
    I don’t see Seuss making them into evil characters. I do see woodcuts using the same eye rendering for demons and other underworld characters, but I hope those don’t get banned by a foreign culture because it thinks it misrepresents its own people. At this point people are on a veritable ‘witch-hunt’ looking for their witches and waiting for Bradburys Firemen to come burn them.
    - boomboomsubban 6y ago
      >I don’t see Seuss making them into evil characters He was making anti-Japan propaganda, there's no doubt he made them into evil characters. Proof http://keyeventsofworldwar2.weebly.com/uploads/1/9/6/4/19640425/689958544.jpg http://keyeventsofworldwar2.weebly.com/uploads/1/9/6/4/19640...
      - nec4b 6y ago
        Do you have a problem with anti Japan war propaganda?
        boomboomsubban 6y ago
swader999 6y ago
And western people often get nose jobs.
bobthechef 6y ago
Can you support this claim about imperialism (also, "common" is a rather huge exaggeration)? I hear it made all the time in a hand wavy way with no substantive demonstration. Frankly, it sounds rather condescending, as in: East Asians couldn't possibly find the kinds of eye shapes more common among European stock more beautiful unless they were conditioned into believing that in some way! Seems rather dismissive.
- boomboomsubban 6y ago
  Western imperialism is an obvious factor in the East Asian countries this is popular in, such as South Korea and Taiwan. There's no concrete proof this is a result of imperialism, but the differences between the counterparts North Korea and China provide limited evidence it's the cause. As for common, the estimates I can find show between 1/5th and 1/3rd of South Korean woman receive double eyelid surgery.

AnIdiotOnTheNet 6y ago

> In the East Asian country where my family came from and many of my family still live, and in the neighboring East Asian countries where I've lived for so many years, drawing their own eyes as "slanted lines!" is commonplace. Yeah, and black people commonly use the N-word among themselves too. That doesn't mean it isn't offensive for me to use it.

mc32 6y ago
What? Now only a kind of person can draw in that style? This is beyond ridiculous. What if the character is laughing and their eyes are virtually shut? Sorry, Ray, you need to draw the eyes, I can’t. Ok, now I can draw the hair.
- Person5478 6y ago
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KVN_0qvuhhw&t=159s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KVN_0qvuhhw&t=159s
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 6y ago
  How do you feel about blackface? It's not a thing you can do anymore in theater or movies. It's not like no one is allowed to ever wear black paint on their face or anything, it's a matter of portraying a specific kind of person in an offensively stereotypical manner.
  - aww_dang 6y ago
    https://www.google.com/search?q=robert+downey+jr+blackface https://www.google.com/search?q=robert+downey+jr+blackface In "Tropic Thunder" (2008) Robert Downey Jr. famously wore blackface. Of course I doubt he could do it today, but is that because it would be genuinely offensive, too controversial or both?
    - scottious 6y ago
      When Robert Downey Jr. did it, the context mattered a lot. It was a commentary race. There was an actual black actor along side him that was basically spelling it all out for the audience. They were using blackface as a way to talk about race issues rather than the offensive way it has been used in other contexts. Whether or not that kind of thing would fly today is a different question. I certainly hope that people could look at things holistically and not just have a knee-jerk reaction to something like this. I'm also interested in what black people think about this, because ultimately that's what matters most.

newacct583 6y ago

I'm going to challenge this. Anecdata may be what it is, but I've never seen any popular artwork from any east asian culture that embraces the slanted eye representation. It just doesn't happen. Asian cultures draw asian people as... people. The kind of ridiculous physical caricature we see in this kind of artwork (slanted eyes and buck teeth on asians, long arms, huge lips and a completely non-representative chimpanzee circle around the mouth on africans, etc...) only makes sense when viewed from outside, in the "look at these strange and alien people" sense. No one drawing themself reaches for tropes like this.

tomrod 6y ago
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ukiyo-e https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ukiyo-e Among other genres. Maybe your mental model of people drawing themselves with "slanted eye representation" is more specific in nature? I haven't seen the other tropes you've mentioned though.
- newacct583 6y ago
  > I haven't seen the other tropes you've mentioned though. It doesn't strike you as odd that in this whole enormous controversy which has consumed right wing media all week and driven this thousand+ comment thread to the top of HN... ... that no one thought to show you the actual artwork in question, and that you never looked it up for yourself? Seriously, it's pretty bad. Go look.
  - tomrod 6y ago
    > I'm going to challenge this. Anecdata may be what it is, but I've never seen any popular artwork from any east asian culture that embraces the slanted eye representation. It just doesn't happen. Asian cultures draw asian people as... people My prior comment was in response to this gap. With regards to the controversy stirred up by right-wing propaganda, Aesop's fable of the bull and the gnat applies for me. Peace.
SiVal 6y ago
Here's some anecdata on East Asian websites: Chinese: https://www.aliexpress.com/wholesale?catId=0&initiative_id=SB_20210305054253&origin=y&SearchText=pucca https://www.aliexpress.com/wholesale?catId=0&initiative_id=S... Korean: https://www.chosun.com/site/data/html_dir/2007/05/25/2007052501049.html https://www.chosun.com/site/data/html_dir/2007/05/25/2007052... Japanese: https://www.irasutoya.com/2018/06/blog-post_724.html https://www.irasutoya.com/2018/06/blog-post_724.html

patentatt 6y ago

Context might matter here. Seuss made lots of propaganda for the us military during wwii, specifically with the intent to dehumanize Japanese people. Which, if you’ll recall, eventually led to an environment where the us government thought it was a good idea to murder hundreds of thousands of Japanese civilians in nuclear holocaust. So when he was drawing these slant eyes, he was drawing on that experience and mindset. I don’t believe it was as innocent as you imply. One source among many: https://www.history.com/news/when-dr-seuss-went-to-war https://www.history.com/news/when-dr-seuss-went-to-war

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
mc32 6y ago
Yeah they also dehumanized nazis (and Germans in general too, or did you forget?) It’s not like they were known for being chivalrous (Bataan).
- patentatt 6y ago
  Im not sure what the relevance is here? Trying to deflect with a whataboutism argument doesn’t undermine the position I espoused.
  - tarboreus 6y ago
    It kind of does undermine your position. It shows that you don't really care about the process of dehumanization for purposes of encouraging warlike action, but rather the inherent offensiveness of specific types of images.
- candybar 6y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internment_of_Japanese_Americans#/media/File:Seuss_cartoon.png https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internment_of_Japanese_America... There's a distinction here between demonizing the enemy you're fighting against and demonizing the citizens of your own country for having a particular national origin. The cartoon here implies that Japanese-Americans (depicted the same way as the Japanese emperor in other cartoons) are traitors. And Dr. Seuss was German-American himself and did not try to imply through his cartoons that German-Americans or Italian-Americans are traitors.

aww_dang 6y ago

>It's almost as if their outrage depends less on actual hurt feelings and more on how much of a payoff they calculate they might earn from Those in Charge Whose Opinions Actually Matter I wonder if _some_ may feel guilt for their own past actions or a historical burden unfairly hefted upon them. Instead of approaching that, it _may_ be easier to externalize and blame others. This _could_ explain the rampant accusations of racism. It is easy to see how this could become a self-perpetuating feedback loop.