Kinda Focused on Being Adorable Right Now

Havana Xeros

Cuteness is rooted in visual commodi ties rather than the language of the arts. Unlike its avant-garde counterpart which is characterized as sharp and cutting-edge, cuteness can’t speak, has no harsh edges, and is usually infantile and feminine. It is an evolutionary adaptation that primes our minds and bodies for fun and sociable interactions.1

The indoctrination of cuteness is explained by Morten L. Kringelbach et al. in their study, On Cuteness: Unlocking the Parental Brain and Beyond, as a physiological phenomenon that has been linked to an increase in empathy, motivation, and mental performance.2 We are currently in an empathy gap post-pandemic, where we struggle to predict emotions in ourselves and others because we underestimate how our innate behaviors influence us. Society sees comfort in the familiar, which often resides in cuteness. What does this mean for society? How is cross-cultural cuteness shifting and in what ways does it emerge to fit our needs?

According to Sianne Ngai’s article The Cuteness of the Avant-Garde, terms such as cute, whimsical, and cozy emerged during the rise of consumerism.3 The rapid development of new commodities with a focus on design and advertising came about around the mid-twentieth century, when cuteness became a descriptor, not just for objects but for people as well. Cuteness as a term was used mostly in relation to physical appearance and applied to diminutive persons. The descriptor was later associated with femininity, culture, and national differences between the East and West.

Behavioural psychologists have separated cuteness into two categories—one that is childlike and associated with vulnerability, caretaking, big eyes, and softness. The oth er is whimsical, fun, and indulgent. The baby cuteness aesthetic is very dependent on touch. Small, malleable, and soft are some adjectives that embody what society deems cute. Konrad Lorenz, an Austrian ethologist, coined the term “baby schema” to represent a phenomenon motivating caretaking behaviours and affecting women more heavily.4

Round and simple visual properties leave space for interpretation and relatability, allowing people to imagine characters with these features are feeling emotions with you. Simple, unformed faces with little detail become rounder and therefore cuter (e.g. miffy). Characteristics such as helplessness and pitifulness mixed with properties of softness and simplicity create the perfect formula for cuteness according to Lorenz.5 This formula is amplified by the depiction of grogginess and the act of eating, seen in characters like Winniethe-Pooh with his jar of honey, or toddlers who wipe their eyes after waking up from a nap. At the same time, cuteness has the tendency to be hyper-objectified, dehumanizing subjects into objects. These are all characteristics of cuteness that have existed for years and are often similar between most cultures.

Philosopher Daniel Harris points out the anthropomorphism involved in cuteness. He defines “the narcissism of cute” as a “world without nature, one that annihilates ‘otherness,’ ruthlessly suppresses the nonhuman, and allows nothing, including our own children, to be separate and distinct from us.”6 Cuteness here can develop into a personification strate gy for otherness while making us assign feel ings such as vulnerability, pain, and the need for protection. This manifests in the real world through non-human objects with faces, such as Gudetama, a personified egg demonstrating that food can be presented as cute.

Before anything, the intention of cuteness is a taste quality aligning with products for children. Once children began being perceived as separate from adults in the twentieth century due to the influence of child labour rights, cute toy objects appeared on the market to control children’s aggressiveness, according to Sianne Ngai.7 The American toy industry began using dolls to teach domestic skills, and the use of malleable materials would allow children to express aggression by squishing and throwing. Toys and concepts such as the emergence of Kewpies, a brand of dolls and figurines deriving from cartoonist Rose O’Neill, were far from helpless. These baby-like characters acted as a social reformer, educating mothers and helping end children’s welfare as society started to view children as more vulnerable and innocent than adults.

In Japan, cuteness, or Kawaii culture, accelerated the development of society as a whole, reaching not just the toy industry, but also industrial design, print culture, fashion, food and more. Japanese post-war fascination with Kawaii emerged as a way to express inferiority in the monarchy, which grew into a violent aesthetic seen in the work of artists like Takashi Murakami.8

Kawaii is the Japanese ideology of cuteness, originating from the word kawahayushi, a term used to describe sympathy and pity towards more vulnerable members of society such as children. The trend took off in the early 1970s with the emergence of a new childish handwrit ing style influencing a large number of teenagers in high school, especially women, as explained in Sharon Kinsella’s article Cuties In Japan. 9 From this childish handwriting, infantile slang became widely used, furthering the Kawaii aesthetic into what it is today with an emphasis on characters from Sanrio products, cosplay, small finger foods, and anime.10 To this day, Kawaii is associated with the fantasy of remaining young, being shojo (an unmarried woman), and having no responsibilities. This was seen as a form of rebellion, similar to how punk was used by teenagers in the West. Japanese toy icons such as Nara, Hello Kitty, and Kogepan appealed to every age group, not just children, bringing the concept of cuteness to adults. Psychological studies corroborate this, such as a 2011 record stating that even babies and children prefer cherubic faces, and that cuteness affects both men and women even if they’re not parents.11 This research further drives the idea that cuteness is a universal experience.

With cuteness manifesting itself in channels such as playful, child-like clothing and visually compelling media, a link between cuteness and pleasure is evident. This association has opened up the possibility for cuteness to be sexualized. This is a common argument against the merits of cuteness, known as the anti-cute argument according to Ngai. In this sense, cuteness can be seen through modernist writer Gertrude Stein’s perspective as “anything but precious or safe” in her book Tender Buttons: Objects, Food, Rooms 12

Cuteness as a fashion aesthetic has been criticized for encouraging girls and young women to act submissive, weak, and innocent rather than mature, assertive, and independent. The criticism culminates in the switch in male post-war pornography from glorifying motherly roles to childlike roles. Thus, cuteness is often referred to by the anti-cute as a fetishistic aesthetic.13

Mainstream Japanese culture views cuteness as a distraction for working adults. Cuteness is heavily correlated with indulgence and overconsumption. Young people are caught up in collecting items and cosplaying, leading to a negative impact on both the environment and consumers’ wallets. Governments and other forms of authority have used cuteness in the form of mascots to distract from war crimes and anti-humanitarian activities. In an article by Neil Steinberg, he states rather than being perceived as a figure of authority, the government wants you to believe they are your friend.14 This is seen in examples such as Pipo-kun, the Tokyo Police mascot.

Based on the pervasiveness of cuteness in several cultural domains, it is no surprise that globalization and the desire to appear cute is flooding aesthetic and fashion choices for teens and young adults. We are seeing the influence of queer independent FEATURE director Gregg Araki’s saturated fashion and lifestyle aesthetics, maximalist Harajuku fashion seen in media like Fruits Magazine, Marc Jacobs’ Heaven fashion label, and introspective dreamscape

Notes

1. “Cuteness and Science.” Cute Studies. Accessed March 25, 2023. https://www.cutestudies.org/cuteness-and-science.

2. Kringelbach, Morten L et al. “On Cuteness: Unlocking the Parental Brain and Beyond.” WTrends in cognitive sciences 20, no. 7 (July 2016): 545-558. doi: 10.1016/j. tics.2016.05.003.

3. Ngai, Sianne. “The Cuteness of the Avant-Garde.” Critical Inquiry 31, no. 4 (Summer 2005): 811-847.https://doi.org/10.1086/444516.

4. Glocker, Melanie L. et al. “Baby Schema in Infant Faces Induces Cuteness Perception and Motivation for Caretaking in Adults.” Ethology 115, no. 3 (March 2009): 257-263, 10.1111/j.1439-0310.2008.01603.x.

5. Glocker et al., “Baby Schema.” worlds in cover art by Drain Gang and other hyperpop musicians. The aesthetic imagery of new-age cuteness is all-encompassing and has contributed to the online revival of 2000s subcultures, like emo and scene kids.

6. Harris, Daniel. Cute, Quaint, Hungry And Romantic: The Aesthetics Of Consumerism. New York: MJF Books, 2000.

7. Ngai, “The Cuteness of the Avant-Garde,” 817.

8. Ngai, “The Cuteness of the Avant-Garde,” 834.

Cross-cultural cuteness is being considered post-pandemic as we long for the nostalgic comfort and bliss of childhood icons from the ’90s and early ’00s. Society is working on filling the deprivation emerging from the empathy gap, and cuteness acts as a method to separate fantasy from reality. Cuteness intersects vulnerability, yet it invites the potential for increased passivity.

Quintessentially cute traits can cause the chemical release of dopamine and oxytocin through long hugs, but can also excite an individual’s sadistic desire used for mastery and control because people lose the ability to think critically around cute things. Perhaps the adoption of cuteness allows people to manage feelings of powerlessness built around their production of capital during times of political turbulence. It creates political imagination, a vision about the capacity to create and inhabit an otherwise embodied persona of toys, playfulness, and vulnerability. It’s a surrender of dignity and a violent kind of delightfulness.

9. Kinsella, Sharon. “Cuties in Japan.” In Women, Media and Consumption in Japan, 220-254. New York: Routledge, 1995.

10. Sato, Kumiko. “From Hello Kitty to Cod Roe Kewpie: A Postwar Cultural History of Cuteness in Japan.” Association for Asian Studies 14, no. 2 (Fall 2009): 38-42. https:// www.asianstudies.org/publications/eaa/archives/from-hello-kitty-to-cod-roe-kewpiea-postwar-cultural-history-of-cuteness-in-japan/.

11. Parsons, Christine E. et al. “The Motivational Salience of Infant Faces Is Similar for Men and Women.” Public Library of Science 6, no. 5 (2011): e20632. 10.1371/journal. pone.0020632.

12. Stein, Gertrude. Tender Buttons Objects, Food, Rooms. Mineola, NY: Dover Publications,1997.

13. Harris, Daniel. “Cuteness.” Salmagundi, no. 96 (Fall 1992): 184-186.

14. Steinberg, Neil. “The emerging field of cute studies can help us understand the dark side of adorableness.” Quartz. July 24, 2016. https://qz.com/740598/the-emerging-fieldof-cute-studies-can-help-us-understand-the-dark-side-of-adorableness.