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IN/VISIBLE DIFFERENCE: ASIAN AMERICAN WOMEN AND THE POLITICS OF SPECTACLE
Abstract: This article discusses the positioning of Asian American women in the socialized landscape of the United States. Through an examination of popular culture venues such as fashion spreads and film, I argue that the Asian American woman's body is encoded as a site of spectularized differences that marks the boundaries of normative whiteness and uphold the promises of liberal multiculturalism.
Keywords: Japanese American, Asian American women, orientalism, racism.
It might thrill you to know that we are in, and in fashion this Spring. Sporadically throughout last year, and especially in the first four months of 1997, several major fashion magazines have featured articles or pictorial layouts on fashion and makeup trends that take their inspiration from "Asia." We are this season's accoutrement of choice. "From Chinese mandarin collars to Japanese zori shoes, you can broaden your style horizons by looking East" announces the February issue of Mademoiselle ("Asia Major" 98). And what savings are ours! Dig through the closet for your personal collection of "your people's" clothing, combine with jeans or a micro-mini for the panache of East-West pastiche, "a mix of East and West that's sexy, unexpected and easy to wear" (98). Reach no farther than the kitchen table for that rakishly ethnic hairpiece -- hashi in the hair (and you'll always be ready to dig into any Oriental gastronomic celebration). And where others must go about "breaking the shape rules for [eye] shadow [to] create...An Asian edge, echoing the season's Far East-inspired clothes" (Harper's Bazaar 332), you needn't draw in that Asian, almond-eyed, exotic slant with heavy eyeliner and smoky shadow.
You already have The Look. No need to find the blood-red lipstick and nail-polish from two seasons ago: with nary a cosmetic swatch, your very face, unadorned, calls up the necessary allusions to Dragon Lady sexuality, the sensually decorative surfaces of the Orient, the waft of Old Chinatown and colonial Vietnam. What does Kate Moss -- stylishly "at peace in Vietnam" (Vogue 147) and posed with "unexpectedly open [Vietnamese] people" (Vogue 13) -- got that you ain't got? Well: aside from a history of Exclusion Acts, Executive Orders, racial slurs, hate crimes, Affirmative Action attacks, and ghettoization -- nothing (though one...