I was looking around online checking out some fashion sites and I came across pictures of what people in the west call harajuku girls (above). I heard about harajuku fashion a while back. Apparently so-called harajuku fashion came about in Tokyo, Japan in the 90's. It's sort of a mixture of styles, mainly punk, traditional Japanese and Goth. The teens who styled and wore the clothes sometimes hung around in the area of a train station called Harajuku Station. Hence the name harajuku girls.I saw something though that I had not heard about. In 2004 the pop singer Gwen Stefani formally of the band No Doubt released an album called Love. Angel. Music. Baby. Ms Stefani at that time hired back up dancers who were called The Harajuku Girls. The dance group featured four Asian women. Three Japanese women and one Japanese American woman. The women worked as back up dancers for live performances as well as video's.
Sometime after this there became a stir in some parts of the Asian American community calling the use of these women degrading and that it perpetuated stereotypes about Asian women. Well that struck me because that seems to be a constant concern in parts of the African American community with regard to rap videos and the depiction of African American women.
So I wondered what would happen if instead of Asian American women fighting such battles by themselves and African American women fighting by themselves and let's not leave out Hispanic American and Native American women and Arab American women, the list goes on. What would happen if all of these groups fought together. Imagine the strength of a coalition of American women of color fighting all the ills that effect all of the groups. How much more effective would millions of women of color be in so many areas, politics, demeaning depictions in the media, violence against women and children, work place discrimination, poverty, the list goes on. The fact is that few of the ills that plague each group does so to that group alone.
So instead of Asian American women speaking out against the negative depiction of harajuku girls by Gwen Stefani and African American women speaking out against negative depictions of African American women in rap video's, how about all women of color speaking out against all of the negative depictions.
Why is it that people of color in this country are so eager to find reasons of discord between respective groups rather than finding commonality? Are we all fighting to see who is the number one victim? Maybe I'm being naive and I'm sure many people would agree that I am and site reason after reason why this couldn't happen, but I hold out hope that one day women of color in America and the world for that matter will see what divides us is far less than what unites us. Maybe one day all woman of color will stand together as one, what a force to be reckoned with that would be.
Whether it's harajuku girls or video vixens it's the same attack. It's an attack on the humanity of women. It desensitizes society and allows people to view woman of color as being less. I hope the time is near that we will join together, more voices equals more power.
