First, spell my name right. It's printed right on my posts. Simple phonics.

You come off as a know-it-all with a chip on your shoulder. However you see it, your comment was stereotypical, borderline racist, and blatently offensive. As a student of Japanese culture for the last 18 years I might possibly have more insight than you, ignorant as you are. Being married to a Japanese does indeed add to that as we do converse (imagine that! I must speak Japanese right?)quite alot about Japanese culture and the motivations behind it. I've never known any Japanese people who truly want to 'look more western'. What, you don't know any American females who color their hair? Who are they emulating? Going back to the root of this article it's just beauty enhancement. Who determines what is beauty? The person who chooses to have the enhancements of course.

God, you're cynical. I'm a cynic but you overshadow me. How are you such an expert on Cosplay? Do you participate? I've been in attendance at Anime Conventions on and off for the last 14 years and I've never met anyone who takes it to the level you describe. 90% of it is just people having fun, not the other way around. Sure, there are peobably some perverts in the group at least equal to any sampling of humanity. From your assumption I wonder if you think Dungeons and Dragons is the Devil's game or Twisted Sister has backwards masquing to entice teens into suicide? If you wanna track down a perverted organization attack the Furries or NAMBLA, groups that are widely known for deviance.

Enough said ...

@Jim

Don't I know it. Unfortunately, I'm quite bad with chemistry... Nearly blew the science building sky high with Intro to Chem.

@Dalvius

Racism is presuming that a race is inferior compared to another. What you failed to pick out is that I have no option whatsoever on whether Americans or Japanese are superior... but that there has been extensive study that certain subsets of Americans believe the Japanese to be superior, and certain subsets of Japanese believe Westerns -and/or Caucasians-to be superior. Is it racist to discuss a certain culture's attitude towards another culture?

And yes, sometimes a rose is just a rose. What Im trying to point out though is that in MOST cases of cosplay, its much more than that. Perhaps most cosplayers dont even realize that they're up to their eyeballs in cultural assumptions, sterotypes, and historic misunderstandings... Societies of Red Men, which were quite popular during the Revolution, believed whole heartedly that they just happened to be dressing in Native Americans Plains regalia for fun. That isn't quite how actual Native Americans-or modern scholars-see the phenomenon, though.

Perhaps my past has made me a bit jaded. I am quite a fan of some anime shows, and sometimes someone dressing up in cosplay really is just harmless fun, but I've also discovered that most cosplayers have no notion with what they're actually dealing with. They parade it off as 'just good fun,' yet the effects of worshipping Japan through this narrow lens of anime doesn't lead to multiculturalism, just an idealized version of this fantasy world. And BECAUSE most cosplayers are not familiar with the culture they're borrowing from, they fail to notice some of the more subtle implications of what they're doing.

Laurel had a very excellent point. Her analysis of Japanese women transforming themselves to seem more Caucasian is a fast-moving trend, and demonstrates that there's more to this 'anime' thing than mere cartoons. Unfortunately, there isn't yet mounds and mounds of research about these sub-societies within Japan and the United States, and I'm working primarily off my own observations and conclusions.

And, also, adding that you're married to a Japanese person? What was that about? Some sort of 'I know more than you, who studied and lived in this culture for years, because I MARRIED one!' So, what, the mere act of marriage makes you multicultural? Makes you the expert? I beg your pardon, I was unaware.

I don't know much about cosplay, but I do enjoy watching Japanese anime and have some friends who were or are grad students in Japan, so they have first hand experience.

Not unlike the thread about Beyonce and her skin color retouch by L'Oreal, this relates back to the larger theme that any woman who departs in appearance from a very strict Caucasian appearance is now considered "ugly" no matter what her race or natural looks. Anime women are nominally Japanese, but always look westernized -- big eyes, blue or green eyes, tiny noses, big breasts, white skin. This is not the natural appearance of an Asian woman at all.

What is scary is that now Asian women, both in Japan and the US, are artifically changing their appearance to LOOK LIKE ANIME, rather than changing anime to look more like real women. So you see Asian women dying their GORGEOUS natural straight dark hair to crazy light colors, using makeup and PLASTIC SURGERY to get larger eyes with Western-type eyelids and having breast implants.

In contrast, the contact lenses are creepy but not as bad -- they don't cause a permanent physical change. (No, they cannot make your actual eyes any larger -- they just give you a larger looking pupil in a variety of colors.) They also have contacts to give you "cat eyes" or crazy Marilyn Mason eyes. BTW, you need to maintain STRICT contact lens eye care (drops, cases, cleaning equipment and DO NOT USE YOUR FINGERS in your eye without washing first!) or you will get a nasty corneal infection. This are not toys!

What we need to be asking ourselves as human beings is why we cannot find NORMAL HUMAN WOMEN OF DIFFERENT RACES to be beautiful as god and mother nature created them -- rather than impose ridiculous and arbitrary standards derived from VERY stereotyped caucasion looks. This harms everyone, including most white women who can't even live up to this harsh, ridiculous standard themselves -- and it's off-the-planet for Asian or black women to try and achieve.

I believe it's also ugly -- in the moral sense of the word -- demeans all of us not to recognize the inherent beauty in natural womanhood --- yes, kinkky hair, small breasts, brown eyes, slanted eyes, wide noses....all of it. All of it is beautiful. There is not one "pre-ordained white beauty" that all must bow to.

I hope we come to see this as ugly and destructive, especially to young girls but even more to so to men, who are being systematically trained to despise everything natural about the opposite sex.