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WSJ_KYARY

                                                      March 20, 2014


Kyary Pamyu Pamyu, an interview by
Jeff Yang, July 27, 2013:
                                                http://blogs.wsj.com/speakeasy/2013/07/27/kyary-pamyu-pamyu-takes-pop-beyond-cute/

       "I want to spread the word of kawaii to the
       rest of the world-- I want to see it embraced
       by everybody," says Kyary. "And by kawaii, I
       don't just mean cute. There's a difference
       between lovely, cute and kawaii. Kawaii, to me,
       is a state of mind."

       To Kyary, kawaii is anything that jars you out
       of your sense of balance and normalcy, and
       prompts an involuntary response of pleasure.
       It could be an object, a gesture, an image, a
       person. It could be something sweet and
       heartwarming, or something weird and bizarre.
       As long as it gets you to say ooh, aah or awwww,
       in Kyary's eyes, it has the "dimension" of kawaii.

       "Everything can be kawaii," she asserts. "In fact,
       there's no such thing to me as 'not kawaii,' even
       if you try to tell me so-- because I can *make*
       anything kawaii."

There are aspects of this esthetic
theory that may seem familar.

On alt.gothic they used to refer to this
as the "fuzzy pink bunny theory of goth",         The leader of a movement
i.e. "I am a goth, therefore anything I           is always tempted to
do is goth.  If I wear a fuzzy pink bunny         stretch the boundaries
suit, then that is goth."                         of definitions, to
                                                  make it more inclusive.

        Any esthetic category is                       EVOLVING_BEAT
        likely to have fuzzy
        boundaries (pink, or not),                And if you're used to seeing
        and it the demands for                    the world through a certain
        precise definitions                       lens, you tend to see
        quickly get tiresome.                     elements of it everywhere,
                                                  in anything.



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