Previous installments of The Toast’s advice column from two disparate and imperfect persons can be found here. Last time: Death.
I am marrying my absolute favorite person in the world next year. It’s wonderful, glorious, I’m brimming with happiness, blah blah blah wedding planning is hard, blah blah blah, but there is a specific point of etiquette I’d like to ask about, and I don’t have any real-life people to ask who won’t think I’m ridiculous. The wedding is going to be a fairly chill, barbecue-in-the-backyard-of-our-home, low-key sort of event. I’m trying to figure out favors, and think it might be nice to have little bags of wildflower seeds, and I would like to attach little paper cranes to the bags with our names and the date written on the wings. I learned some basic origami years ago in the girl scouts, and it would be a relaxing diy-sort of project for me, and I think the symbolism behind them is beautiful (I read the Sadako book in grade school, obviously cried inconsolably, became a raging librul pacifist, etc., but I really like the idea of folding a thousand of them and bringing myself and my family a thousand years of good luck) but my fiance and I are both just your average white, USA-ian type folks and I am having trouble figuring out whether paper folding is a pretty craft project that can easily cross cultural borders, or if bringing them into my wedding is going to evoke imperialism and orientalism and atomic bombs, or seem really appropriative and icky and like I’m adopting a symbol from a culture that’s not my own because I don’t *like* the symbols from my own culture as much. I don’t think I have any Japanese friends that I can ask (I mean, I haven’t reviewed everybody’s citizenship forms, or their grandparents’ forms, but it hasn’t come up) and I would feel weird about asking random friends of other east-Asian ethnicities, because damn, white girl, no. And I’m pretty sure if I ask the generality of facebook people will tell me I’m overthinking things, but I’d really rather not be a presumptuous jerk if I can help it, and I know the commentariat at the Toast is varied and culturally aware and kind, and I’d like to hear opinions that might be more well-thought-out and sensitive than “shrug, do what you want, it’s just a decoration.” Or, if it is just a decoration, maybe just the opinion of someone who probably at least briefly considered that it might be more than that.
TL/DR: Paper cranes: pretty decoration that a white girl can use in her wedding, or significant cultural artifact that white girls should probably avoid?
Nicole/Mallory: We’re also white ladies, and while we both lean toward the “better not to do it” camp, we thought it might be wise to broaden the circle beyond “a handful of white ladies.” Official polls demonstrated a moderate “yeah, just don’t do it” consensus; but we also sought the specific counsel of friend-of-the-Toast Sarah Jeong. Take it away, Sarah! Can you stay and help us answer the other questions too? Yes? Awesome!
Sarah: You’re wondering whether using paper cranes in your wedding would be a culturally appropriative use, but in your defense, it’s because you read a book about a Japanese child dying of leukemia caused by American bombs. You, an American, are now really into paper cranes and their deep and beautiful symbolism. Should I throw “restrained beauty,” “elegant simplicity,” and “quiet endurance” in here as well.
So now you’re concerned over the possibility that your paper cranes are going to somehow be offensive, but as you point out, you have no Japanese friends. Maybe. You’re not sure. Something about citizenship forms. You’re not going to be able to shop around for a Bona Fide Japanese Person to sell you an indulgence.
If you’re worried something you want to do is racist or even just insensitive, then don’t do it, especially if that something involves folding tons of tiny paper birds while simultaneously planning a wedding.
I recently became interested in building a professional online presence as opposed to what I have now. I’m just a lowly assistant in the entertainment industry and I’d like to start blogging on the side. My problem is that my unique first name combined with my last name lands you on the first page of Google with results leading to only me. I don’t have the pleasure of sharing a name with thousands of other people. I’ve had a problem with IRL people stalking and harassing me online. Do I suck it up and accept the risks of having my name out there or do I use a pseudonym?
Nicole: Use a pseudonym. It’s too late for me. Save yourself.
Mallory: Wait a bit, if this “online presence/sideline blogging” is for your professional life, how will it do you any good if it’s not under your professional name? If this were something you were just doing on the side to scratch a creative itch or to make a bit of money, I could see how a pseudonym could be helpful, but if this is something you’re doing to develop your career, I’m not sure what good it would do you if no one knew that it was you.
I mean, only you can decide what you do and don’t feel comfortable doing; if these folks who have harassed you are deeply persistent and they might be actively looking for ways to find you, or if you honestly believe that writing under your real name online could put you in danger, do not do that. With that caveat, here is my incredibly flawed advice that stems from my deeply limited career experience.
I don’t have a terribly common name myself, the good Lord having seen fit to sprinkle out Ortbergs with a restrained rather than a liberal hand. When I graduated in 2009, I had a degree in English literature from a second-tier evangelical Christian college, no job, and a girlfriend who had just lost hers after coming out. (Lost one of her jobs, anyhow. She was very enterprising, that girlfriend. You’d like her enormously. Everyone likes her. I used to pick her up after her shift at Guitar Center ended and I’d always have to stare down the various bassists and guitarists and keyboardists who wanted her to do the crossword puzzle in the mornings with them instead of me.)
At any rate, I took to commenting on a handful of websites (I never thought my “how I got my current job” story was going to start with “I took to commenting on a handful of websites,” but the world is full of many things) and eventually to pestering the editors of said websites with occasional emails and eventually started writing articles — usually for free, often things that weren’t very good at all for websites that no one had heard of. Somewhere on the Internet there exists a website, the name of which I will never tell you, that features a series of recaps I did very sporadically for the first season of The Vampire Diaries. (I also commented a great deal on the TWoP forums under a handle that I will take to my grave.) Anyhow, these periodic snippets of garbage I cast out upon the filth-ridden waters of the World Wide Web slowly coalesced into a big enough garbage raft that I was able to haul my starving carcass onto it and harness the wind well enough to sail away from the steaming wreckage of my early life. (I quit my job to start writing, is what I’m saying; I think that analogy got away from me.)
It took several years for this to happen, and I never would have guessed any of this might exist at the outset, and I don’t think it would have happened if I hadn’t written under my own name. It came slowly. I’d write about something that would catch a particular writer or editor’s eye, and they’d start to talk to me, and then I’d write something for them, and somehow at the end of it I had a professional reputation. All of which is to say, I suppose, is that there is a great deal to be said for having a body of work that people in your field can associate with your name. You may or may not decide that that is right for you, of course, but there it is. Just start commenting on blogs a lot, and then quit your job a few years later; that’s my advice.
I don’t care for myself. I don’t hate myself per se, but I’m not enamored with myself either. It’s like a meh feeling. What I want is to be someone else, someone specific. She is great. And by great, I mean: nice, funny, talented, interesting, laid back, whip-smart, hardworking, attractive, friendly, outdoorsy yet cultured and has a sexy voice. She also may have a boyfriend who I may or may not be in love with.
Unfortunately, it is logistically impossible for me to become her (curse you non-magical universe). And wanting to be her is getting in the way of doing my work. How can I stop wanting to be this amazing woman? Or are there books (fiction or non-) that deal with this subject?
Nicole: I’m very sorry, this sounds very difficult for you. I’m going to make an assumption here, which is that you are probably on the young side? I am only saying this because I think this is a feeling which dissipates somewhat with age. Not everyone becomes more comfortable with themselves over time, but that is definitely what this feels like to me. There are three ways to go with this:
1) Pick and pursue small reasonable variants of what you wish you were more like. If you don’t like being outdoorsy, who gives a shit? Skip it, it’s not a positive character trait, it’s a preference. If you’d like to work harder…maybe work harder? It’s not impossible, maybe you’ll get into it.
2) Work on your self-esteem. Maybe with a therapist, maybe by figuring out what you do like about yourself and starting there. Are you happy generally? Is this a niggling annoyance in your otherwise happy life? Or is it a big deal? It sounds like it’s the latter, and for that, I would seek professional help.
3) If you have actually constructed a version of this better-person-than-you in your mind, and she seems real, it may be Jolene. Then you’re out of luck.
Sarah: I feel like this is the plot to a movie. One that ends poorly.
You have left me oscillating wildly between sympathy and mild terror. It’s a hard thing to want something impossible (and I’m sure you’re aware, literally turning into this one girl you know is not a feasible goal). But on the other hand, I really wish you hadn’t asked for book recommendations. My first thought was Silence of the Lambs. My second thought was The Body Thief.
Assuming you are a perfectly nice person who just happened to write a letter that pushed all my fear buttons, let me offer you some vague and dubious advice. You shouldn’t think of your Self in terms of the sum of your superficial characteristics. And yes, being funny, talented, and “whip-smart” are all superficial characteristics. Personhood is better conceived of as the values, beliefs, relationships, and visions we direct our gifts towards. So what are those for you? And is the sum of those things — for you — really all that “meh”?
Mallory: So much of this — comparing your inner life to her outer life, wanting so badly to escape out of yourself that you’d like to wear someone else’s skin — is deeply normal and deeply relatable. Except for this part: “wanting to be her is getting in the way of doing my work.” This is still relatable but less normal, and is in fact Bad For You. This takes you beyond the realm where a person can still be helped by a pair of friendly but generally clueless bloggists.
If you’re so fixated on a person that it’s affecting your ability to function — and I’d argue that feeling consistently “meh” about yourself is not a state of feeling that you have to settle for — then the time has come to have a series of long and involved and preferably regular conversations with a therapist or a religious…guy. Pastor? Rabbi? Imam? Anyone at an Episcopal service who’s wearing robes and has a short haircut and a friendly expression, regardless of gender? Someone whose job it is to talk to you about how to live with your feelings, is what I’m getting at. Religious professionals will often counsel you for free, which is a handy trick if your insurance doesn’t cover therapy.
Also, it is entirely possible that you are not in love with this woman’s boyfriend at all, but are in fact in love with said woman. This may also prove significant. I hate to call everything deep-seated lesbianism, but this sounds a lot — a lot – like how I thought about the first woman I fell in love with before I was even willing to consider the possibility that I could be in love with a woman. This is a woman you think about so much you can’t do your job, who’s also “nice, funny, talented, interesting, laid back, whip-smart, hardworking, attractive, friendly, outdoorsy yet cultured and has a sexy voice.” My not-at-all-meh-friend (you read The Toast, how on earth could you be meh?), you don’t sound very in love with her boyfriend at all.
Sarah Jeong is a third-year law student prone to indignant outbursts. She tweets at @sarahjeong.
Tags: advice, advice from two disparate persons, cultural appropriation, racism, sarah jeong, she said she said
although, from the anecdotal info i know about japanese nationality, it is SUPER hard to gain japanese citizenship if one isn’t ethnically japanese. i think you have to be at least 51%, which means that it’s at least third generation. BUT i assume there are lots of people who aren’t technically japanese (ie, citizenship) who would consider themselves so, anyway. fraught!
I think Sarah might be too judgmental to give advice to letter writer #2. Whether she’s “scared” by this person’s problem isn’t really the issue and is only going to make the writer feel worse. Someone with this problem doesn’t need to hear that they’re probably super-weird and really creeping out the advice columnist.
Being so disenchanted with yourself and alienated from yourself that you’d rather be someone else is the problem; the problem is not that the letter-writer has fixated on a particular person. It’s the expression of the problem. It could have been someone else. There’s an element of a crush in there, and over-identification. I don’t know what the solution is, but it probably isn’t to make cracks about the person.
Yeah, I think the letter-writer even said, “I know this is logistically impossible” or something to that effect.
As an Asian person who grew up folding lots of origami, i’d like to contribute this:
You can still make origami, just don’t make cranes (whose imagery is fraught specifically for the reasons mentioned above).
There’s so many different kinds and shapes of origami folds, flowers, animals, you-name-it. I’m sure you would be able to find something that will be appropriate for your wedding. This would be appreciation, not appropriation.
Origami flowers in lieu of, say, real flowers at a winter wedding could be kind of neat, no?
This is what I was going to say, maybe flowers, also if you want something to put favors in, there is a super easy box with lid one that you can google instructions for.
Yes! I think origami itself isn’t the problem, it’s the symbolism of the crane.
I was going to say that I went to a North American wedding where the bride had made origami flowers instead of having real flowers. Neither she nor the groom was Japanese, but I didn’t get the impression she was trying to appropriate Japanese culture but rather that she wanted to decorate her tables with flowers she’d made. Also, apparently it’s less expensive than having tons of fresh flowers.
Origami is awesome, but it’s become a pretty common activity everywhere. Leaving aside the connection to the crane and the particular book (which is about American imperialism, I’m guessing) I think origami itself isn’t problematic. It’d be different if you wanted to say, get married at a Shinto temple or wear traditional Japanese garments or something. I think, though, having some cranes is a bad idea. Just have some flowers, and some less problematic symbols floating around.
“Anyone at an Episcopal service who’s wearing robes and has a short haircut and a friendly expression, regardless of gender?”
that was a maybe-not-surprisingly super accurate observation of Episcopal Types.
I know from denominations!
For United, just add casserole.
Ha ha, I essentially said the same thing below. Great minds! (and our Episcopalian ones, too)
Holy shit YES on the paper cranes-American bombs thing. Also, how in the actual fuck do you make a weird aside about Japanese-Americans’ citizenship papers when asking about cultural sensitivity? Uh, super-shameful U.S. internment of its own citizens within living memory much?
I’m leaning toward “the question wasn’t so bad, but the way you explained it was absolutely so bad” for this one.
The explanation was so bad that it exposed how pitifully little the asker knows about the history/culture they’re concerned about appropriating, hence answering the question—how undelightfully recursive! Dear fellow white people: read a book now and then, jeez.
I think possibly (hopefully?) what she was trying to say that she’s aware that one can be Japanese-as-in-from Japan without being what we think of as ethnically Japanese? So she is acknowledging that she’s never grilled her apparently-white friends on whether they are actually of Ainu descent?
That was how I interpreted it as well. Like, I figured she thought “well, I don’t have any friends that I know are Japanese, but if I say that people will think I think people from Japan can only look one way so I want to make it clear that that’s not what I think.”
That’s how I interpreted it too: she didn’t want to assume people’s cultural identification, but doesn’t know anyone who has told her they identify as Japanese/have Japanese heritage.
Yeah, that was how I interpreted it too. I’d prefer to not bring the internment into a well-meaning parenthetical remark.
Yeah I actually read that as an attempt to be MORE culturally sensitive.
LW1: For what it’s worth, in actual Japan you really only fold 1000 paper cranes if someone is sick/injured and you want them to get better, which might not be the sort of connotation you’d want for, like, a wedding.
Honestly, if I were at your wedding and saw that you had cutesy little cranes on your place cards or whatever, I’d roll my eyes and be all WHITE PEOPLE SHIT. (But double-honestly, I probably would not be friends with the type of person who would put cutesy little cranes on place cards, because that shit makes me sick to my stomach! And also people who are like that tend to be all OH MY GOD YOU ARE FROM JAPAN YOU ARE MY JAPANESE FRIEND PLEASE DRAW ME AN ANIME/WEAVE ME A KIMONO!!!! on me, and I don’t have patience for that! I am projecting and assuming all over this comment and I don’t mean for it to be as mean as it might sound! Sorry!)
I fold paper cranes when I’m bored and have paper, and am a white person. Is that weird / gross
I do not believe you. You are a bee, pretending to be a white person, attempting to distract us with questions of crafts-based cultural appropriation for your own SINISTER PURPOSES.
Look, somebody teach me how to make origami honeycombs to distract that jerk with the full-body net suit and the smoke bellows, and I swear I will never appropriate anything from Japanese people / you homo sapiens in general, ever again!
…I just looked up pictures of origami honeycomb in hopes of, you know, actually finding instructions and maybe trying my hand at making some, but that shit is WAYYYY out of my league.
I mean, I don’t think so (I do the same thing with Starburst wrappers lying around), because you’re just, like, doing it for yourself. But somehow I feel like the wedding situation is kind of different and more icky.
I feel like I should include the disclaimer that I am just one (and not even a full one) of the many Japanese people there are in this world, and my opinions on whether something is cultural appropriation are based on my own gut feelings/life experience, and not my self-determined status as an Arbiter of Cultural Appropriation Law.
Yeah just to be clear, I’m not looking for a pass – just an opinion or two. I had just never considered that it might be problematic. Now I’m thanking my lucky stars that I never got a tattoo of one, which I was considering due to my habit!
Also, real talk, I could definitely teach myself one other kind of origami animal to make.
Have you seen the thousandfold books in the Crafts section at your local bookstore that show you how to fold zebras and kettles and DINOSAURS? I’m pretty sure there is nothing whatsoever culturally appropriative about origami dinosaurs.
Oh, origami dinosaurs are the best wedding theme! Or like a hundred flowers, and then fifteen dinosaurs.
Huh. This whole thread has given me a lot to think about, as someone who is mulling over ideas for a not-yet-set wedding (but also not an imaginary wedding, for the record).
Here’s background:
1. I lived in Japan for about six years, which is where I met my fiance, and where we spent the first few years of our life together. Japan has a very special place in our hearts. (Neither of us are of Japanese heritage. I am American; he is not.)
2. I was taught to fold cranes by my Japanese friends, and I think they always just enjoyed showing me how to do it; we’d sometimes absent-mindedly fold wrappers while we were hanging out in a restaurant or whatever, and I don’t think they were ever associating it with bad things and my American-ness.
3. To my knowledge, folding 1,000 cranes is not only done when someone is sick, but also historically done by a bride or couple in order to wish for a long and happy marriage. (It also has some annoying gender associations; i.e. the bride would fold the thousand paper cranes as a sort of “labor of love” to show what a good and patient wife she would be.) I have also seen paper cranes featured at the wedding of one of my Japanese friends, so while I can’t confirm that this is still a widely-held tradition, I can confirm that I’m not a total looney in saying this.
4. Strings of paper cranes are also used as a symbol of hope for peace, not just recovery for sickness. Just to put that out there. That is just a side note and has nothing to do with weddings.
5. It’s also important to note, though, that I lived in Tokyo and had mostly socially liberal and outgoing friends who ENJOYED hanging out with foreigners, exchanging cultures, etc, and so they are not necessarily representative of all Japanese people as a whole. (Who is, of course? But anyway.)
OK, so here’s my question: I would like it if our wedding had a few aesthetic touches that reminded us of Japan, because like I said, it’s important to us. I had thought that having paper cranes (possibly mixed in with other origami shapes, I don’t know) would be both pretty and personally significant. But now I worry: I actually truly think that were any of my Japanese friends to make it over to the wedding, they would not look at them and think “yikes” (particularly if the cranes were mixed in with other stuff). But would socially-conscious white people think that? Has the crane’s association with general good luck been eclipsed by its association with healing from sickness and/or healing for peace? (Not that the message of “living in a peaceful world free of wars” isn’t lovely, it’s just a bit intense for a wedding.) Throwing out the idea of whether they SHOULD think that, and whether it is justified or not, do you think they WOULD?
I’m asking because I know the answer is always “if you think people will be offended, just don’t do it”… but I haven’t really thought until this point that it would be something that would offend people. Is that naive/ignorant? Have my Japanese friends just been too forgiving and polite to point out that some people might construe it as weird?
(Full disclaimer: it’s probably obvious that I am kind of HOPING that this background makes it not-inappropriate for me, but I am definitely still looking for true opinions. It’s not like it is so important to me that I want to risk offending people.)
I am fascinated by this detail about the thousand paper cranes being used for sickness. I’ve never heard of the story, but I’ve definitely been involved with two white-bride weddings that involved paper cranes. In one case, I never even met the bride; her sister was my coworker at a job with a lot of downtime, and she had us all folding paper cranes so she could focus on other lady-of-honor duties. How did this happen? Why are all these white ladies folding cranes for their weddings?
Why are all these white ladies getting tattoos of the character for “poultry” on their lower back*? Because Asia, and serenity, and tranquility, and Zen.
*(HAVE SEEN THIS IRL)
I am an American who speaks/reads Chinese, and I have seen a dude on the bus with the character for “regret” tattooed (VERY SHODDILY) on his bicep (I think it was a…tattoo typo? for “ocean” maybe).
I feel like the phrase “in actual Japan” is sadly super useful
It’s disparate from Internet White People Japan, where every vending machine dispenses used school girls’ panties, women have to wear vending machine disguises to prevent assault, everybody has “bagel head” injections, and nobody has sex.
Yeah, like I said somewhere else, I think it’s more morbid than offensive. I am not of the Pinterest persuasion to begin with, and I’m not into little decorative thingies that will probably end up in a landfill. But I do feel there’s a large spectrum of cultural appropriation out there, and this is on the end of the spectrum where I just…don’t feel offended by it.
I am a little alarmed that some people seem to be conflating the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki with the internment of Japanese people living in the US and American citizens of Japanese descent. Like, yes, both related to World War II, and there’s a shared culture between the two groups but like…please don’t bring the internment into this.
Obligatory: I am J-A, do not speak for all Japanese/Japanese-Americans, other people have the right to feel offended by this question, etc.
Sorry for bringing that into the conversation. They’re not related in ways that are relevant to the crane question, but I was just totally jaw-droppingly gobsmacked by the idea that you’d throw an offhand “checking citizenship papers” reference into a question about not offending Japanese people. It seems so ignant as to almost flirt with trolling.
It’s okay, I agree that it’s a faux pas in this context. I take issue more with comments that are saying “this is offensive to Japanese-Americans because the internment,” which, no.
I find questions of cultural appropriation difficult, and I’ve been reading a lot about them.
One of the criteria that I’m tentatively working on is meaningful engagement.
As an example, I study a martial art with Japanese origins. We dress in heavy kimono called a gi, and wear belts which we call obi. The names of our lists of techniques, and of the techniques themselves are in Japanese. Is this cultural appropriation?
I don’t think so. The school of martial arts was founded by a Japanese-American in the 1920’s in Hawaii. He set the costume, and made the names of the lists and the techniques. He taught his material to Anglos (and women, interestingly enough), and they have passed it along to me. There are stories about how some in Japan were unhappy with him for teaching Anglos, but he ignored them.
So, that’s not appropriation as far as I’m concerned. I both engage with the material on a regular basis, and have a pedigree that goes back to the direct action of someone of Japanese origin deliberately spreading this knowledge.
I love Japanese things. I watch lots of Japanese film. Kurosawa is my favorite director. I watch lots of anime, too. I’ve been to Japan. I’ve had friends who were Japanese-American, though there are none in my circle now. I’ve listened to one complain about the dumb questions he got when he started grad school in the Midwest. These things, to me, qualify as “meaningful engagement”. There might be somebody, somewhere, though that would call me out for it. There’s always that person, I think.
Were the poster to take a class in origami, it might work better for me.
Re: martial arts: Yeah, I practice taoist tai chi, and “cultural exchange” was one of Master Moy’s four founding principles when he started the taoist tai chi society here. I don’t feel any guilt about participating in, say, a lantern festival and traditional dinner (where I help serve) at our international centre in Orangeville, because that was all part of Master Moy’s vision. But I’d feel very differently about anything where I haven’t been specifically invited to come and learn and participate and help. For me, that’s the safest way to appreciate without appropriating: wait for an invitation rather than just taking what I want.
I think there’s a difference in these cultural items though. Japanese film and anime are meant as entertainment. No culture has ownership of exercise and self-defense. To me, the definition of appropriation is basically using something without respect, which obviously takes on different meanings depending on the thing. If you’re obsessed with Japanese film, clearly you respect the makers. If you study a certain type of martial-arts from a different culture, you’re engaging meaningfully and trying to learn. But if you make a bunch of paper cranes because you think they’re pretty and decide to ignore the cultural meaning and symbolism behind them, that doesn’t come off as very respectful.
or, not even that the letter writer is deciding “to ignore the cultural meaning and symbolism behind them” as much as her understanding of the cultural meaning/symbolism of the cranes is based on a kids’ book she read in grade school. either way, you’re right, it’s about not treating the culture with enough respect.
I think the bizarre ass “citizenship papers” business is evidence enough that the original asker doesn’t know enough about Japanese culture & history for this to qualify as cultural exchange.
Pretty sure the LW used that term to make an ironic point about people who try to judge ethnicity or nationality based on looks. That is, she’s trying to say that obviously she doesn’t know for sure whether her friends are of a certain race or background — you can’t tell just by looking at people, after all, and she’s sure as heck not going to ask them for birth certificates!
Yes, it’s the fact that she presumably didn’t know about the internments (I mean my god, I’d hope so, otherwise that’s just in astoundingly bad taste) that suggests she doesn’t know much about Japanese culture, or American history in general.
Shit, y’all, I *get* that she didn’t know about the US’s shameful record of interning Japanese-Americans during WWII, but how is that a reasonable excuse or at all acceptable? Like, “oh, I said something kind of rude but it’s because I had no idea about this extreme & long-term violation of a minority’s human rights that happened within living memory in my own country & was hugely popular with white people at the time?” That makes it better?
ANYWAY I’m done. I’ll feel productive about this comment thread if one person looks up that shit on wikipedia who didn’t know about it before and/or I get my stupid wedding thank yous actually mailed.
Hey, just so you know, I did’t know about internment before and am right now on the wiki page, so you have made a difference
I do think that you are making a very good point. It’s not that you don’t understand what the writer is trying to say, it’s that it inadvertently refers to something – almost certainly from her own country, and within the lifetime of people she knows – that was a gross violation of civil rights and also pretty fucking racist. It’s such an apt reference to Japanese internment- albeit accidentally – that it seems like trolling.
It’s really pretty amazing how many people will jump in to defend someone who said something offensive. Protip: your defense doesn’t make her sound better. A) Because it shows how ignorant she is of Japan and Japanese culture and history to say something like this without realizing the implications. B) Because there are many many other ways to know about your friends’ ethnic backgrounds that don’t involve asking them for birth certificates. B1) They also don’t involve asking your friends “What are you?” C) If you don’t know your friends well enough to know if they are Japanese without asking for a birth certificate, maybe they aren’t your friends. D) I get that it’s a joke, jokes can be pretty problematic.
I’m sure someone else can deal with the rest of the alphabet. But really, stop defending people who say offensive stuff with “She didn’t mean it like that!” and instead listen to the people who call it out.
I absolutely agree that intent is close to meaningless WRT something like this–I didn’t know abt the internment camps either, so I’m reading about it. And I’m sure the LW is doing the same, as she’s made it clear that she does care about cultural appropriation and wants to do right. And we’ve got to get into the habit of knowing history and context before throwing racially-charged jokes out there all willy-nilly.
But I think point C is a little wobbly. I have friends who are all across the ethnic spectrum but I certainly don’t know where they land unless they’re first or second generation Americans, in which case it’s going to come up more organically in conversation. We white people have a real bad habit of pulling away from our countries of origin and their cultures, and so it doesn’t really come up, at least in my everyday conversations, even with my closest friends, what our backgrounds are. That may absolutely be because we don’t create conversations where that sort of thing is discussed, but I wouldn’t be willing to call the entire friendship into question. Most of my friends don’t know my family was Lithuanian Jewish unless we’re talking about the Holocaust and I mention how they died, and it doesn’t meant they don’t know or care about me.
I think it’s important to disentangle “issues of racism facing Japanese-Americans” from “issues of racism/cultural appropriation against Japan, one of the richest, most powerful and culturally dominant countries on the planet.”
I’m not sure what theoretical construct could explain that it’s wrong for an American to ignorantly wear a kimono but OK for a Japanese person to ignorantly wear blue jeans and flannels. In both cases it’s a rich person exercising their privilege to cherry-pick aspects of a foreign culture that seem exotic to them.
Yo, is it important though? Cause I’m pretty sure those issues are damn tangled, as Jeannie describes above
I do think that Japan is not immune to cultural appropriation by the West, and to me a white person wearing a kimono (such as Monet’s La Japonaise) carries orientalist implications that aren’t paralleled by a Japanese person wearing blue jeans (appropriating…the Gold Rush?).
That being said, although Japanese people in Japan and Japanese people/Japanese-Americans in the US do share cultural elements, I want us to be careful not to other Americans of Japanese descent. People in Japan do not have the same experience of Western hegemony as Japanese-Americans (just to give an anecdotal example, when I worked with Japanese teenagers a couple of summers ago none of them had heard of the internment, let alone other forms of discrimination such as the detention center at Angel Island, citizenship denial to the Issei, etc.), and although there is a shared culture, many symbols and rituals mean different things on the different sides of the Pacific.
None of this is to discount the cultural imperialism (past and present-day) of the US or Japan, or the unthinking or insensitive appropriation of other cultures on the individual level.
Pretty sure it’s a theoretical construct called “Orientalism.”
It’s disingenuous to say that those things can be disentangled, or that “non-Japanese American wearing a kimono” is equivalent to “Japanese person ignorantly wearing blue jeans and flannels.” Is it even possible to wear jeans ignorantly? I would also disagree that a modern Japanese person wearing western-style clothes is doing so out of a desire to be exotic. A non-Japanese American wearing a kimono to the movies knows that they will stand out, whereas a Japanese person wearing jeans and flannel to the movies knows that they will fit in.
They are pants from Genoa worn by sailors worldwide for centuries. I agree with you.
Also I have given you a gift, and that gift is the fashion associated with the Anne of Green Gables fandom in Japan. It is fantastic, and I think it does come from a desire to emulate another culture.
I’ve been struggling with jealously a lot lately, so I identify a bit with LW #3. There’s not ONE specific person I want to be, but rather, I start feeling deeply insecure when I spend time around talented, intelligent people, which causes me to have depression/anxiety spirals about how I’ll never be good enough. This is partially because I recently started writing fiction again in earnest (well, at least moreso than before) and it’s caused many fears about my basic, intrinsic inadequacy to resurface, when they had before lain quiet because I wasn’t trying to accomplish anything that felt greatly important to me. I talked with my boyfriend about this a little, and he said, “Well, normally when people feel jealousy it gives them drive to work harder and succeed,” but in my case I instead feel like my best will never be good enough and I in particular am simply not good enough, so what’s the point of trying? But writing feels so good that I’m trying anyway, little by little.
I don’t think there was really a point to this, I just felt like oversharing on the internet again.
And I AM going to therapy and taking brain medication, so, you know.
I hear you, in case my outlook wasn’t clear from my ticked-off answer to the OP above. :-
When I started writing, a lot if the same thing happened to me. But now it’s better! I channeled all the feelings into the book and I think it made my writing stronger. Now I have a finished novel and am looking for an agent.
You might find the writing will help your brain, and that’s more important than anything!
I totally react in the same way as you do. That kind of insecurity makes me want to hide under my bed and never come out, not like BE THE BEST AND BETTER THAN THOSE PEOPLE FUCK THEM. I wish I was the latter. UGH THERE I GO AGAIN WISHING I WAS SOMEONE ELSE WAS BETTER THAN ME FUCK IT ALL.
my unique first name combined with my last name lands you on the first page of Google with results leading to only me
you and me both, seriously. I’ve never hated my name or anything, but: parents, why? why did you do this to me?
My real name is shared by one other googleable person, and he is a Baron of Fife.
The only person with my name is my exact age, but she lives in Sao Paulo, and only shows up on the 7th page of Google or something.
I’m friends with her mom on Facebook, though.
My brother befriends anyone on facebook with his same name. He’s also befriended several people that share names with his family members.
If I’m the only person with my name, can I say I do that too?
On the first page of my Google results is a photo of 13-year-old me playing the violin. I hate that whenever people google me for professional reasons, they see this picture. HOW DO I GET RID OF IT HELP ME PLEASE!
Spam the internet with your existence and bump it down to the second page.
I won’t touch on the cultural appropriation aspects of Question 1, because a) I don’t know shit and b) luckily a lot of other people DO know a lot of relevant shit and they’ve answered with some of that shit already (and god bless y’all for it, you smartypants, you), so I’m going to bring up this point which no one’s mentioned yet: Nobody likes wedding favors. It’s a nice thought, sure, but it’s just one more piece of clutter your guests have to deal with and to make things worse it’s a piece of clutter with a nice sentiment attached to it. I am a pack rat and have a tendency to give everything I own weird emotional symbolism ANYWAY so if you give me something to commemorate your wedding (which I went to because I love you and want to see you celebrate something happy) it will be nearly impossible for me to chuck it without feeling super guilty. When I was a kid, wedding matchbooks were The Thing because everyone still smoked, so at least they were useful, but Jordan almonds are nearly universally reviled, and I’ve never met anyone who’s actually planted wedding favor flower seeds. I will confess that little tins of M&Ms in the couple’s wedding colors were given out at the last wedding I went to, and those were nice, but they were also meant to be consumed right away and not kept forever or planted.
+1000. Also, when I got married I had all these twee projects I was going to do, realized how much time they would take and how little guests would care, and then promptly nixed them. And you know what? Everything turned out fine! The main thing is to get out your thank-yous in a timely fashion. All else is moot.
oh god stop i have all the thank you cards written in one bag on my desk and the stamps to send them in another bag in the kitchen do you think with plate tectonics and the such they’ll eventually find each other science please help
the power is within you all along!
get outta here captain planet
True. Unless it’s something edible, that stuff’s probably getting thrown away as soon as the guest gets home.
Consumable wedding favors are great. The best favor I ever got was a jar of absolutely delicious strawberry jam, made by the bride’s aunt. My best friend is getting married in January, and their favors are going to be a spice mix that the groom absolutely loves and uses on everything.
Ugh you guys are making me rethink my “All wedding favors are stupid period end of story” stance. How can I argue with delicious candy and jams?
I’ll rebut, cause I got wedding-favor honey all over the inside of a purse I borrowed without asking from the friend I was housesitting for. Clearly the bride’s fault
The last wedding I went to gave out truffles in little paper double happiness boxes and we left some in the car over night and they melted. I… still ate them though.
i am not going to say i didn’t lick the purse (sadly don’t mean that in a sapphic way)
Yeah, the older I get the more and more I agree with this sentiment. Please, stop giving out betta fish or mason jars artfully decorated with twine.
I like the seeds idea, though, partially because no one will ever know if you don’t plant them, or if you throw them out. Even better though? I like the idea of seed bombs. Little balls of dirt and seeds, and you can throw them from the window of a moving car if you want to and it’s totally cool.
People give away FISH? As in, living animals that require care and are not toys or decorations? WTAF??
Fish are the worst.
I did go to a wedding that had a beta fish in a big giant vase as centerpieces and whoever wanted them could take them home. It kinda worked out because there were enough people at that wedding who actually wanted to keep and care for a fish, and they also put care instructions and food and stuff to take along with the fish if you did choose to take one home. It is a somewhat problematic idea.
I did take one home and I very much enjoyed it, but it certainly is not for everyone. The weirdest part was that my fish pretty lived exactly as long as the marriage did. Like it survived my cat, knocking the vase over and trying to eat it the day after I brought home and I practically had to pry my poor fish out my cats mouth, and it was a fish miracle, but then he died a couple years later right when they broke up.
The last wedding I went to had a candy buffet bar with little takeout containers (with ribbon with the bride and groom’s names on it) and that was great and got me through the trip home the next day and then I just kept the ribbon for a while.
Conversely, my parents went to their friend’s kid’s wedding and because the bride and groom are both dentists the wedding favors were TOOTHBRUSHES with the names and date embossed. At least that’s useful?
I think that toothbrush thing is adorable. New trend! Useful wedding favors related to your profession!
YES. Wedding favors that aren’t edible or clearly useful are generally a waste of time and money. Mine were those roses made from Hershey’s kisses and people ate them or threw them away and we didn’t care, and then we didn’t realize some leftovers were in a random wedding box in the garage and rats got into them and it became a huge effing disaster, so you know what? I’m actually on the fence about any wedding favors at all. And, um, definitely not ones that could be construed as culturally appropriative.
I am at the beginning of the wedding planning process and I had been thinking of buying a semi-random assortment of used books and putting them on the tables in place of charger plates. I was hoping people would trade with each other for books they might want to read, and that it would stimulate interesting conversation. Stupid?
Unless it’s VERY clear that the books are for taking and trading, people will probably leave them on the table. I like the idea, but be super clear!
I think I still have several small things of bubbles in the center console of my car. They are probably getting funky on me.
Can bubbles go bad? [I guess you’re in a position to find out! Go blow some bubbles and let us know what happens!]
Agreed. I think that seeds in particular are impractical and likely to end up in the garbage. Most people don’t have the space or inclination to plant things. I get where this trend is coming from and appreciate the green sentiment, but just give people a bookmark or something.
whatever, jordan almonds are delicious.
The best one ever was a little card printed at each seat that said that in place of favors, the bride and groom had made a donation to a marriage equality campaign in honor of their guests.
ugh but that seems so preachy (even though i fully endorse the sentiment).
I can see that some people might feel that way. I guess this couple knew their audience. Also, you could do it with the food bank or something else that just says that “we realize that you don’t want a tiny framed photo of us so instead of wasting $500 on those, we’ll just give it to charity.” I don’t usually like people publicly performing their good deeds but this one just didn’t bug me.
oh, I’m glad it worked well for the wedding you were at. As a person who was there you are a much better judge of it than I! (Didn’t mean to knock any particular person’s wedding, as a random internet stranger, sorry).
The “wedding favors” concept is pretty culturally alien for me, so that’s probably also why it seems so strange — if favors were an expected part of weddings, which I guess they are in the US (?), then it would be much more seamless and a nice thing probably. Even better as a food bank donation which is so practical and less political (there is something about politics being forced on guests who are there for a different reason, even if the politics are great politics we all agree with).
Yeah, I was going to say, the best I’ve gotten was a card saying that in lieu of favors they made a donation to a charity that did work on the disease that killed the bride’s mom. It was lovely and personal and I didn’t have to find somewhere to stash something in my tiny wedding appropriate bag.
(I did get jam once that I liked too though)
We did that! But for what killed the groom’s mom. (RIP, Loretta. I hear you were a BAMF.)
The last wedding favor I got was a pink Hawaiian sea salt mix with hot red pepper flakes, dried green onion, and other deliciousness I can’t identify. I think it’s the best wedding favor I’ve ever received. So… I’m all for useful and consumable favors.
Agreed. I am making favor boxes (using origami, actually, because it’s cheaper than buying tins or whatever) and putting mints in them, because what do you need after a night of dancing and booze? Fresh breath, of course.
Brilliant!
Also lots of wildflower mixes are invasive, and trust me trust me, trying to find ones that aren’t is ALL OF YOUR BRAIN.
And some flowers are invasive in some places and not in others, and really, do you want to look that up for a hundred people?
Don’t Plant a Pest.
We rented a photo booth for our reception which did triple-time duty as entertainment, our guest book (there were attendants who pasted the photos into a scrapbook, next to which the guests could write their sentiment) and a favor. We liked it because EVERYONE loves photobooth photos and it is a fun thing that can go on the refrigerator or into a scrapbook if you’re into that sort of thing and it doesn’t take up a lot of space.
Anyone at an Episcopal service who’s wearing robes and has a short haircut and a friendly expression, regardless of gender?
Oh, so you’ve met my priest, have you, Mallory? Isn’t she awesome?
I don’t know who you are. I don’t know what you want. If you are looking for ransom, I can tell you I don’t have money. But what I do have are a very particular set of skills; skills I have acquired over a very long career. Skills that make me a nightmare for people like you. If you tell me where the Vampire Diaries recaps are, that’ll be the end of it. I will not look for you, I will not pursue you. But if you don’t, I will look for you, I will find you, and I will write you a strongly-worded letter.
oh my god I just googled my name + Vampire Diaries and thank god it doesn’t show up
Dammit.
“Welp that’s the extent of my skillset,” said Liam Neeson’s character, as he closed his laptop and went off to make some scrambled eggs.
And then was beset by wolves!!!
I know where they are. Can I tell them where they are?
STOPPPP
OMG, this is HIGHLY relevant to my interests.
I’m not saying you should tell us where they are, but I am saying that you should tease the hell out of melis by pretending that you will.
I definitely identify with LW#3. Since I’m a teacher and can be fired for… everything, anything, whatever, while I would love to write on the side, I am also worried about publishing under my real name. I could publish under my maiden name, but that last name is MUCH more rare than my married name, and it would be really easy to tie it back to me. I don’t know what to do at all.
I am literally the only person on the Internet with my first name/last name, and I also have an evil twin who writes stuff on the internet. Basically I try to keep my use of swears to a judicious level, avoid discussing anything that is too obviously coded Attention Seeking & Possibly Illegal (sex, drugs), and hope for the best. So far there haven’t been any negative repercussions! (For example, I have never been stalked!)
Although for some reason, my Tumblr comes up under a search for my real name and I don’t know why because I have NEVER typed my full name anywhere on it, nor associated it with my “professional” email address WHY GOOGLE WHYYYYYY.
I am the only person in the world with my first and last name (there aren’t a lot of Podiaks out there) and my Tumblr is CaitlinPodiak.com and I write cannabis strain reviews on it because I hate jobs and never want to have a real one again.
I am also the only person on the internet with my first name/last name! I used to go to great lengths to keep my real name away from my internet writing, but then I decided to be a writer on the internet and now it’s pretty nice to know that a google search of my name basically functions as a portfolio.
That’s a good way to think about it! Also, you can be relatively assured that your results will never be mixed up with a name twin writing, like, Mussolini erotica.
I identify SO HARD with that whole sublimating attraction into jealousy thing Mallory talks about. I had this moment about a year out of high school where I looked back on just hours and hours of self-flagellating misery and was like “oh shit, I didn’t want to be more like her, I wanted to DO her!”
Yuuuuup.
Years ago when I was younger and totally ignorant of cultural appropriation issues, I bought a pair of handmade Native American copper earrings. They’re really beautiful, but I have no idea what they symbolize or even which tribal group they were made by (although I know where I bought them, and it’s most likely one of two groups from that area of Montana). I haven’t worn them in years, since I don’t know what they represent. I’ve tried googling descriptions of the symbols and I’ve never been able to find anything similar. But then even if I do figure out what they mean, I don’t know if that would make me able to wear them. Like, if they symbolized something “cool” or “interesting” or “beautiful” would I wear them? Why would that make a difference? I guess it’s safest to never wear them again, but that is also weird because the person who made them intended them to be worn as jewelry, so does that make a difference? :/ I wish Younger Me had thought to ask any of these questions when I bought them.
I’m confused by this–they were made by a tribe for sale, from whom you bought them, in order to be worn as jewelry…how is doing that cultural appropriation? People are mad about wholesalers undercutting tribes with fake Native jewelry cause it undercuts Native sellers, but buying directly from a tribe is supporting that tribe economically and I’m not sure how that is bad.
You’re right, buying directly from a tribe is supporting them economically and they were meant to be jewelry. But I think I feel uncomfortable wearing them because I don’t know what they symbolize. Like, if someone says “Oh, those earrings are so pretty, where are they from / what do they mean?” I just have to say “Montana, I dunno what they’re for, they’re just pretty?” I don’t want to wear them without understanding any of their cultural context and risk offending someone. Maybe I’m being oversensitive? I dunno.
I think – and this is just my opinion – that if the tribe who made them felt like you *needed* to know what they meant before you could wear them, they’d have made a point of putting it on a card or something to give you along with the purchase.
This makes me a little sad, because if the tribe was offering them for sale they probably not only were profiting financially, they probably also wanted to share their artistic impulses with the outside world. Sometimes (often) culture is about sharing and exchanging. Obviously it can be done in unethical ways if you ignore or trivialize another culture’s symbols, like the crane question above… but sometimes cultural sharing is a good thing! It’s a form of respect and appreciation, and part of the process of cultural change, don’t you think?
How are you sure that they represent or symbolize something? Maybe it’s not even an issue, and they just made them because the design was pretty. Could be!
this may help: http://nativeappropriations.com/2010/04/but-why-c… (scroll down for “What CAN I wear?”) and see also the blog Beyond Buckskin at http://beyondbuckskin.blogspot.com/ (note to hosts, would love to see a post from either of these ladies!) and keep in mind that the Indian Arts and Crafts Act states that, among other things, it’s illegal to sell things as “Indian made” if they’re not.
I’ve reached out to Adrienne in the past, and will again! I will absolutely email the Beyond Buckskin writer. I think they get very busy with offensive Halloween costume season, so November will be the sweet spot!
My feeling on this: wear the earrings if you like them. This is mostly based on my experiences with western Canadian groups, but art has been a huge part of the recent cultural revival/radical self-determination movements. A lot of indigenous art isn’t religious or a static “cultural tradition” but more self-expression which includes one’s culture. White people MAKING faux-indigenous art is gross and appropriative, but I don’t think buying it is as long as it’s bought as art because it’s beautiful or in some other way speaks to you, and not out of some desire to have it because it’s exotic. We allow white people to make art (and jewelry) that expresses themselves and their culture and worldview and pay them for it as a recognition of its value and their skill, and in my mind buying art from indigenous artists that does the same is likewise valid, and anyone who gives you shit for supporting indigenous artists or who insists that you can only suppoort indigenous artists who create art in which their identity as an indigenous person is sufficiently hidden is in the wrong, as I see it.
I’m totally for consumable wedding favors. The last wedding favor I got was a Hawaiian sea salt mix/rub thing with hot red pepper flakes, dried green onion, and some other deliciousness I can’t identify. Best wedding favor I’ve received.
i have the opposite problem of #2. My name is so generic that I am virtually impossible to find on google or social media without some other pre-existing link — I usually appear about 50 pages in on the search results for social media, and if you google my first and last name you just get a lot of stuff about female aviators. Female aviation is a pretty awesome topic, but as someone who hopes to someday have some sort of career of note, it might be nice to have the option of tangibly existing on the internet.
i fear my only choice is to become a Three Name Person. is it possible to become one as a grown person without being annoying and pretentious?
Amelia, is that you?
NOT EVEN A FEMALE AVIATOR YOU WOULD HAVE EVER HEARD OF!
I deeply sympathize. There are numerous women on the internet with my name and they all sound really great: photographer, soccer player, concert pianist who published the story of hir transition in the times! But it’s hard to google me. This has forced me to
(a) make up my current assonant handle (literarysara) and use it EVERYWHERE, even though I’m afraid it’s a bit twee.
(b) Google my name along with the names of publications I’ve written for if I want to see if anyone’s written about my writing.
(c) hope that people who want to find my writing do something similar.
Good luck out there!
Am I missing something about the symbolism here? Because I don’t see why an American incorporating paper cranes into their wedding would be any more a form of racist appropriation than Japanese couples incorporating Western wedding traditions with a religious or symbolic history (white dresses, wedding/engagement rings, etc. etc.) into theirs.
Maybe it’s the lack of power imbalance that makes it seem harmless to me? While Japanese people in the U.S. no doubt face a lot of racist bullshit, Japan as a country is not in any way a helpless victim of Western cultural imperialism. Plus the Sadako thing seems to be, by design, an international phenomenon. Is there a deep religious aspect I’m missing or do the Japanese just not want any-non Japanese to pay homage to their movement for world peace in this way?
ETA: I agree with the advice “if you think something might be racist, don’t do it,” but I still feel like I’m missing something here.
The Sadako thing that was an international phenomenon was supposed to be about preventing nuclear war, not wedding decorations.
Also, again, Japanese-Americans–particularly those whose relatives were in the U.S. before WWII–might disagree vehemently with your perception of a “lack of power imbalance.”
That’s why I said it’s important to distinguish issues that affect Japanese people IN AMERICA from Japan the country, you know, the one that conquered most of Southeast Asia and sank half the U.S. Navy prior to being atomically bombed (which I personally think was unnecessary but it’s not like we just picked a random country to drop them on b/c we hate Asians). Obviously the reason we interred the Japanese and not Germans was down to pure unadulterated racism. But there has to be a point where a country is rich and culturally dominant enough that it’s no longer subject to these kinds of accusations of Western cultural appropriation. I mean, Japan has government ministries dedicated to promoting Japanese culture abroad. Maybe LW#1 could write to them and check whether paper cranes is an aspect of that culture they’re interested in promoting? I’m sure they’ll write back if they’re not too busy paying foreigners to sing “Flowers Will Bloom” on NHK.
Cultural appropriation DOES affect Japanese people in America. I can’t follow the weird contortions you’re going through to claim it doesn’t.
I dunno. I work for one of those government ministries you mention, and I agree it’s complex issue, but when my office promotes Japanese culture here in the US, it’s about promoting Japanese culture as connected with Japan and the larger Japanese culture.
What I mean is, we go out and teach lots of kids how to make paper cranes (God have I folded a lot of those things), but when we do so it’s usually in the context of what that practice means in Japanese culture (Sadako and/or healing, as others have pointed out). I think that kind of context is pretty key. After the 2011 tsunami, lots of schools had their students make paper cranes and sent them to our office. That was really touching and not cultural appropriation at all–it’s what origami cranes are meant for. But using them as wedding baggy decorations? I can understand why people would find that off-putting.
Perhaps this is the part I read differently — I got the sense that the LW had really connected with the book (which, I gather, was meant to be part of an international children’s peace movement) and that it had strongly influenced her life. Not that she just thought cranes were neato and had no clue what they meant. e.g. I’m sure she has a better understanding of their connection to broader Japanese culture than the schoolchildren who folded and sent in cranes to you.
picking a weird hill to die on, buddy
Whatever hill I ultimately die on, it’s bound to be a weird one.
HI I’m a Japanese-American lady and I’ll weigh in! World War II is a weird thing to grapple with as a Nikkei–on the one hand, my family members’ lives were completely interrupted by being interned (lol not interred, stuffisthings). The knowledge of that injustice is something that I grew up with: both in formal educational settings (school, Japanese/Japanese-American cultural summer school), but more importantly being a family member to/going to church with/being part of a community with people who still feel ashamed of being interned to this day–their silence about it, their desire to work hard and prove to everyone that they were good Americans. It’s weird to try to reconcile the victorious American narrative of World War II with that. And it’s exponentially weirder to try to reconcile those feelings with the very real fact of Japan’s nationalism/imperialism, which continues to do harm to this day. So…I dunno why I’m putting this down, other than to have a card-carrying Yonsei perspective in the mix.
But frankly, this discussion is drifting from the question of having paper cranes at a wedding! The way I see it, I personally think it’s a bit odd to make the jump from a book about nuclear warfare and leukemia to wedding decorations? I guess it could be offensive, but to me it’s more just…morbid. Also, just fyi, in Japanese culture, white is the color of mourning and funerals. So maybe some pretty origami flowers might be better–or if you want to do cranes, at least make them magenta or something. 🙂
I think this response (and osutein’s above) contains the seeds of a saner and more productive way for LW1 (and the rest of y’all) to look at this situation. If she wants to have paper cranes, she should do it with full understanding of the context and what it means — I think that would be fine with everyone. Perhaps in the process of informing herself on that context she would decide that the associations don’t really go with a wedding, and that would be fine and productive too.
The idea that all nonwhite cultures are perfect, static crystals that need to be protected at all costs from “Western” cultural aggression is an incredibly reductive and frankly intellectually lazy and borderline racist heuristic (i.e. the automatic assumption that nonwhite Japan must at some point have been a victim of Western colonialism and imperialism when in fact it was itself a colonial power) that needs to be put to bed.
How about this: don’t adopt something from another culture if it has a deep religious/spiritual significance, if you are completely ignorant of its meaning and associations, or if members of that culture have said they find it really offensive when other cultures adopt that thing.
(Also, omg at that typo.)
how is your penultimate paragraph NOT what people have been saying? jesus.
Power imbalance: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occupation_of_Japan
Right, the US just woke up one day and decided “let’s go occupy Japan! Because Racism!”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empire_of_Japan <– read the 2,000 words or so that come before “Occupation of Japan”
Not trying to bash Japan here. It’s a perfectly lovely country with some dark periods in its past, much like Belgium or Australia. And like Belgium or Australia it doesn’t really need to be defended against “cultural appropriation,” in my opinion.
Without getting into the nitty-gritty of how well your analogies hold up, I guess I just don’t understand why your point doesn’t begin and end with “Japanese people in the US no doubt face a lot of racist bullshit.” That, not the robustness of Japan’s economy, seems like a more immediate factor in deciding whether to decorate with paper cranes.
Let’s also remember, this is not showing up at someone’s wedding and saying “you are racist for these cranes because nukes” during a toast. She was already concerned they might be offensive, asked what we thought, and has been told.
“I hate to call everything deep-seated lesbianism, but this sounds a lot — a lot – like how I thought about the first woman I fell in love with before I was even willing to consider the possibility that I could be in love with a woman.”
0.o
That’s actually a good call, now that I think about it, because I’m hetero and I have similar feelings about men when I crush on them, especially without really knowing them. One finds oneself [I’m distancing myself here, out of embarrassment] wishing to be them or somehow, cannibal-like, to take in their possibly only imaginary wonderfulness and coolness for oneself. It seems to have something to do with wanting to make up for one’s own perceived deficiencies by stealing or taking in someone else’s good qualities, instead of being able to accept that the whole world is within yourself, you lack for nothing, and wherever you go, there you are anyway so it’s no use trying to run away. ~fin~
it’s so spot-on, that was exactly my first instinct when reading this because that was exactly how i experienced my first few crushes on girls
it’s weird that the only thing I can find on the internet about Orientalism & paper cranes is some bullshit about Lena Dunham being a turd
I haven’t had as much success as Mallory (due to insufficient levels of awesome, I’m sure we are all thinking and are totally correct about right now), but posting under my own name did get me work online. From the humble beginnings of writing comments under movie reviews at the AV Club, I rose to become the terrifying media empire I am today, ie. I write reviews _and_ comments now, and am quite nicely paid for the former, although I still have to work full time in the “real world” to get all that food and shelter junk my body is always on about. Anyway, my point is, if you wanna get noticed, and you are comfortable doing it (that’s a big “if”; I haven’t had to deal with any real harassment outside of jerks on message boards by making myself visible), it’s a really good idea for this kind of work.
Oh dear, LW#3. There are some other posts around that may help you, like the four-page one on Sailor Saturn a week ago.
THERE WAS A POST ON SAILOR SATURN AND I MISSED IT???
I think she might be talking about the Sailor Jupiter one that made me cry at work? unless there WAS a post on Sailor Saturn that I missed, in which case… link please!!
Thank you, oh my gosh, I missed that, but it is beautiful and stunning.
It was actually two pages and on Jupiter. ACCURACY: not my strong suit.
A very beloved third grade teacher at my elementary school taught Sadako and the Thousand Paper Cranes to her students, and when that teacher was diagnosed with cancer, all of the students in the school folded a thousand paper cranes for her. When she died, the cranes were hung all around her photo in the auditorium. This may have been cultural appropriation or whatever but I always saw it as a sweet tribute from students who didn’t know how else to help their teacher.
As to whether one should use them for their wedding, according to this they are traditionally given by the bride’s father on her wedding day, or are sometimes given to a new baby. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thousand_origami_cra…
I’m inclined to agree with the poster above who suggested a different origami design. I understand the appeal of having something to do with your hands while you’re planning a wedding. Maybe an origami star? http://www.origami-make.com/origami-lucky-star.ph… Of course, that could have its own fraught cultural significance, I don’t know.
There is also something to be said for the wedding planning motto of “Your Wedding is Tacky” so, if something really feels meaningful to you and you want to do it, go ahead. http://offbeatbride.com/2008/07/tacky
What’s stopping LW #2 from putting work written under a pseudonym on a resume? You can put something like “Freelance Writer for Thinkpiece, Inc. (as ‘Liz Lemon.’)” You can be like Ken Cosgrove! Or “B.” from STFU Parents, who was anonymous for years. If things change in your life you can transition into using your real name. It takes time to get anywhere with blogging, anyway, so at least you can be honing your skills without putting all your horrible early stuff into the internet vault forever. But maybe someone who is actually in a position to hire writers would disagree.
So…am I the only one who just wants to read Mallory’s recaps of The Vampire Diaries? Because I would read the crap out of those! That show is nutballs and I LOVE it!
I want nothing more in life. I love that show so much!
Nice avatar 🙂
Gibson girl power!
YOU ARE NOT ALONE. :3
Wait, I thought the last LW was talking about a SELF she imagined, not another actual person at first, and now I have gone back and read it and am really confused about who is who, which I suspect might be the root of the issue. Anyway, in either case, it is always good to remember that everyone but everyone but EVERYONE has Shit Going On inside them. It was a big part of growing up for me to realize that every person I met, to some extent, no matter how together they seemed, has layers of weird thoughts and pains and anxieties and associations that trouble them, that make them jealous of other people too, that make them sad for no real reason on otherwise lovely mornings. Nobody is as perfect as we think.
Yes, actually, I wasn’t sure, either, but after reading the advice, I came down on the side of “actual other person.” I wonder now!
I thought LW #3 was talking about an imaginary self too, and now I am also very confused.
If this is about being an imaginary perfect self, then Kate Harding’s amazing post The Fantasy of Being Thin from Shapely Prose is relevant, even if your fantasy self isn’t about weight. It’s all about learning to accept yourself as the person you are, and not waiting to become “better” before you start living your life.
On a completely different topic: I think it’s OK to write under a pseudonym as long as you’re prepared to take credit for it when necessary. Don’t write things you’d be ashamed to have associated with you, but it’s not necessarily a bad thing if everything you do online doesn’t come up when someone googles your name.
FWIW, as a half-Japanese person who grew up without learning very much about Japanese culture but who also gets super uncomfortable around non-Asian people obsessed with Japanese culture, I don’t think the cranes would have raised my eyebrows at all. Perhaps folded paper anything-but-cranes could substitute.
Yeah, I grew up with a fair amount of Japanese culture in my life (went to a Japanese Buddhist temple, attended Japanese American culture school in the summers, and of course doing the J-A family thing) and I also wouldn’t have really given it much thought. I mean, people have ceramic crane chopstick holders, you know?
“This may also prove significant. I hate to call everything deep-seated lesbianism, but this sounds a lot — a lot — like how I thought about the first woman I fell in love with before I was even willing to consider the possibility that I could be in love with a woman.”
Mallory’s advice to LW3 contributed pretty directly to my beginning to come out. <3