Mercedes-Benz has reportedly removed a recent video advertisement published on Chinese social network Weibo on Dec. 25, after the brand was criticized for doing up a model’s face to give her exaggerated sloping eyes.
“Is there any beauty in this makeup?” one critic wrote. “It is not [open for] interpretation. No Chinese will think this kind of ‘beauty’ is attractive,” another added....
This is an interesting problem of subjectivity. Should each racial group be the judge of whether its own features should be minimized or exaggerated with makeup?
Earlier this week, Gucci was similarly called out for a new handbag ad that uses “discriminatory” Chinese features.
Communication-law professor Zhu Wei, of the state’s China University of Political Science and Law, said in a statement to the Global Times regarding Gucci’s ad, “This is extremely disrespectful to our culture. The disgust and revulsion expressed by the whole society toward this kind of insult should be heard.”
Here's the photograph he's denouncing (which looks beautiful to me (ugly handbag, though)):
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58 comments:
It is pretty standard stuff. The CCP has to keep Chinese people from being like or seeing other people be like them.
They need racial tension and racism to help maintain their hold on power.
This is just what tribal regimes do.
This has nothing to do with standards of beauty, and only anything to do with the Chinese Communist Party boot pressing on the faces of everyone, forever.
Get with the program, Althouse. China will object to anything and everything, with and without rational basis, because it wants to extend its supposed authority over as much of all life on this planet as possible. It is the same thing our domestic offense-mongers attempt here, claiming power to demand we behave as they wish, and the more crazy the better for them. The more irrational the demands, the "offended" can play games with changing the rules of what is allowed or offensive, and trying to keep up is a losing game.
You've chronicled this demand to be accepted as authority by marginal groups here in the US, Althouse, from BLM to gender benders to diversity folk to civility bullshit to The Squad to abortion activists to feudalist college adminstrators, and we all should recognize the same game being played here by Chinese state media. To hell with that, and to hell with the Chinese communists.
Oh good grief. Welcome to the party, pal. Have you people ever looked at “western” women in high fashion or other ads?
I don't know enough about the Chinese view of female beauty to know if the Western depiction of "their" women in advertisements should be deemed offensive or not but the fact that there is a debate seems very Western to me. Complaining about this, is that something that the Chinese learned from the West? They may just be very skillfully weaponizing this issue to turn it back against the West in the on-going struggle for world dominance and they don't really give a sh*t otherwise.
I want to know WHO will be the agreed-upon authority figure in each 'racial group' who gets to set these sacred standards of beauty. Lip injections and hair-curling will be verboten for Caucasians, nose contouring and flat irons for Blacks? Unless the models can provide proof that they had said incorrect/inappropriate features prior to the Style Diktat, of course, but then all photography using those folks will have to be asterisk'd?
On Project Runway this season, there have already been some Black designer/contestants who want only Black models to show their designs, so this lunacy doesn't actually seem impossible.
It all looks like Audrey Hepburn to me. Which raises a teensy problem with one movie, but OTOH she did fight the Nazis.
The Mercedes model looks deformed, and it's not just her eyes.
Very unattractive.
She looks as though somebody put her through a 'funhouse mirror' Photoshop filter.
The handbag model looks just fine.
The attire is ugly, too.
I agree with Mikee. The criticisms are coming from people for whom everything is political. Advertising is a form of free speech and should be protected. If the portrayals are offensive to more than the political actors then product sales will be hurt. Bedises, there is no one standard of beauty or ethnic look to maintain. Only those engrossed in the fashion industry think so.
I half expected the eyes in that first photo to start darting around like the eyes behind a Terry Gilliam cut-out animation.
the Republic of Korea has the highest per capita rates of plastic surgery in the world
But, they're not trying to look like the deformed Mercedes Benz model...
They're trying to look like Jihyo from the group #twice ('cause she's Pretty!)
This is a Korean world; the US and China are just living in it
If I'm reading this right, it's the heads that are the problem here.
I find this whole thing inscrutable.
- Loren.
Attractive? That model looks like a Chinese funhouse mirror Mary Poppins.
While suburban white ladies are reading about makeup. the CCP is crushing the last tiny remnants of freedom in Hong Kong.
It’s a globally scaled up version of curly haired girls straightening while the ones born with straight hair spend so much time making curls. Dark people lightening vs pale folk tanning. There’s a million examples.
"...looks beautiful to me (ugly handbag, though)"
I agree. Except for adding the makeup, hair, nose ring/car air freshener, shoes and clothing.
But beauty is in the eye....
While suburban white retired doctors are getting fat over the holidays. the CCP is crushing the last tiny remnants of freedom in Hong Kong.
Bob Boyd either made the best cross-post meta comment on the blog today or is onto something quite fundamental(ist). Or joking. Well played, well played.
Selective disgust and revulsion.
It was the nose earring I found most offensive. WTF?
But there's no such thing as communist repression.
Is it not a little bit racist to have the Chinese model hold a purse with a bamboo handle?
I try to be sensitive to such things.
-Loren
In China, bound feet are coming back. As is the rest of you being bound and gagged if you criticize the Chicoms.
In opera, for example, only white people are depicted as they are in real life. My horned helmet is out to the cleaners right now, but usually I look just like the guy who posed for the Minnesota Vikins logo.
"the CCP is crushing the last tiny remnants of freedom in Hong Kong."
While the Biden family enjoys the riches bestowed on them and bethinks themselves of the kompromat the Chinese have on them, a healthy sample of which we saw on Hunter's laptop.
I could see, without doing a deep dive, how companies might’ve thought worthy of praise to accentuate ethnicity.
On the other hand… as someone born in the Dominican Republic, for example, I could see how Dominicans all over would get upset if a Dominican, expressing himself in a particularly Dominican way, was used to sell beer.
Maybe, if you apply “you spot it, you got it” there’s an elite yearning to get out in all of us.
It was the nose earring I found most offensive. WTF?
She was nuzzling her chihuahua when its collar got caught in her septum piercing. The dog wriggled out and escaped while her eyes were still watering.
Judging by the whip she's holding, Pepito's gonna catch it when he gets home though.
Everything is fake in advertising photos. Once you get addicted to photoshopping the pounds off the models it's hard to stop.
I can understand why people would find the picture offensive: it's the "China doll" look that some would say makes Asian women less human or real or adult than they could be.
But making a stink about it also sets off a negative reaction against the complainers. I think of those old New York magazine graphics. The reaction against the reaction sets in, and a week later nobody remembers any of it.
“discriminatory” Chinese features.
Chinglish as a second language.
While suburban white retired doctors are getting fat over the holidays.
I didn't know you were a colleague, Howard.
Howard: "While suburban white retired doctors are getting fat over the holidays."
Howard will never forgive Michael K for being smarter, more accomplished and with a far far greater experience and capability skill stack than Howard.
We see this often.
Howard: "the CCP is crushing the last tiny remnants of freedom in Hong Kong."
While being assisted by every US tech lefty overlord and being lauded by leftists/democraticals everywhere.
They dont even bother hiding it anymore, such is their confidence in being able to pull off another covid "emergency" for the '22 and '24 elections.
This is a slippery slope, for sure.
I like the way the Chinese seem to be copying the stupidest part of American society, with their tender feelings all hurt.
Are they serious or just goofing around?
Her professional name is Cai Niang Niang. On Sunday, she addressed the too Chinese for China controversy on Weibo saying, “With small eyes, am I not Chinese? I totally agree with patriotism. However, creating big problems out of normal matters has become a morbid obsession. I hope everybody can have a healthy mindset.”
Drago and Doc Mike enjoy a sweet #metoo circle jerk moment. Happy New Years, fellas.
She’s got Bette Davis Eyes
"Should each racial group be the judge of whether its own features should be minimized or exaggerated with makeup?"
Oh, do races exist this week? Isn't that racist?
Howard said...
While suburban white retired doctors are getting fat over the holidays. the CCP is crushing the last tiny remnants of freedom in Hong Kong.
If you cared about the people in Hong Kong you wouldn't support an obviously corrupt shithead that has taken billions in bribes from the Chinese regime.
But you are a pretty empty fellow.
I’d wondered what happened to Shelley Duvall…
Many models in China have a sort of Euro look to them - which is I supposed considered exotically attractive. Larger, rounder eyes are preferred. Therefore, it is possible that the makeup and angles chosen were considered a racial insult - rendering the model into an ugly caricature of Chinese features. This is, according to current social norms, perceived as making the model into something akin to a "Sambo" racial caricature.
It is the puffiness of the upper eyelids and emphasis that would be most offensive. It is currently the style for Chinese women to get plastic surgery to reduce that over-the-eye puffiness and create "double eyelids" (standard western look), as explained here.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-2830602/Plastic-surgery-drastic-t-past-airport-security-Chinese-women-flying-South-Korea-Western-face.html
The handbag one I do think makes a beautiful woman look extreme. The nose whatever-thingie is particularly off-putting.
God, how I miss Laslo at comment threads like this.
Laslo! Laslo! Laslo!
Nothing. Ah, well, worth a try.
Blogger Howard said...
Drago and Doc Mike enjoy a sweet #metoo circle jerk moment. Happy New Years, fellas.
Howard, I am not the guy putting those gay porn books in the 4th grade school libraries.
That's your team.
Hoping everyone, even you Howard, have a happier New Year.
Howard: "Happy New Years,..."
It most certainly is for the ChiComs, mad mullahs of Iran, the taliban, child-trafficking and drug importing cartels AND the russkis!
And we all know why that is, dont we?
China is a diverse nation of over 1.4 billion people. I wonder how many conform to a Chinese stereotype. To artistic depictions. How many women attach a pseudo nasal drip.
Take it from someone who has spent over a decade in Asia, the beauty ranking is Korea, Japan, with China a distant third. Not even close.
'Take it from someone who has spent over a decade in Asia, the beauty ranking is Korea, Japan, with China a distant third. Not even close.'
Having lived in Japan and travelled in China and Korea, I would swap Korea and Japan, but that's just me : )
Why do I think the model has mental health issues?
Because the model was designed by the artist to look strange and to trigger people like you into thinking the world has gone crazy.
Wait til they see what Americans have done to Chinese food! General Tsao must be rolling in his grave.
To dismiss this Chinese teapot tempest as common hypocrisy is unwarranted kindness. On this matter of makeup and eye shape, Western art has been kinder to the Chinese than the Chinese themselves. Here's a bit of what we might call Chinese pinup art from the late 19th century and here's another. These paintings show us the Chinese equivalent of the West's Gibbson Girl, compendia of feminine beauty. I find them exquisitely charming and sexy, but are they realistic? Who knows? If Zhu Wei demands realism and respect, he'd better start at home, don't you think?
But it gets even worse. This is a Yuon period painting on silk. Here's another from the late Ming period. Note the slanted eyes and chalk-white complexions. These are Chinese opinions of Chinese beauty. Were they seeking to be whiter than the white barbarians? How disrespectful.
And yet worse still: A Han period drawing of some gentlemen with eyes represented as mere slits. For shame, how racist can one get? Check out the faces of the famous terracotta soldiers from the tomb of Emperor Qin -- a whole army of slant-eyed chinks crafted by fellow chinks commissioned by the Head Slope himself.
What's the deal with that hair-do (or should I say hair-don't?)
It looks like it was troweled on from a pail of roofing tar, carefully sculpted and then flash-frozen for the photo shoot.
Not an appealing look.
General Tsao must be rolling in his grave.
More likely he's rolling in that sugary glaze.
Wikipedia has an excellent article on the history of Cultural Appropriation
Basically, it's been going on forever. Wikipedia is too politically correct to say its supposed negative connotations are brayed by the Woke or anyone else with an ax to grind. (In this case, the Chinese.)
https://tinyurl.com/3vkyw6aj
Modern voices against the braying:
'...John McWhorter, a professor at Columbia University, criticized the concept in 2014, arguing that cultural borrowing and cross-fertilization is a generally positive thing and is something which is usually done out of admiration, and with no intent to harm the cultures being imitated; he also argued that the specific term "appropriation", which can mean theft, is misleading when applied to something like culture that is not seen by all as a limited resource.[36]
In 2018, conservative columnist Jonah Goldberg described cultural appropriation as a positive thing and dismissed opposition to it as a product of some people's desire to be offended.[174]
Kwame Anthony Appiah, ethics columnist for the New York Times, said that the term cultural appropriation incorrectly labels contemptuous behavior as a property crime. According to Appiah, "The key question in the use of symbols or regalia associated with another identity group is not: What are my rights of ownership? Rather it's: Are my actions disrespectful?"[175][176]
In 2016, author Lionel Shriver said that authors from a cultural majority have a right to write in the voice of someone from a cultural minority, attacking the idea that this constitutes cultural appropriation. Referring to a case in which U.S. college students were facing disciplinary action for wearing sombreros to a "tequila party", she said: "The moral of the sombrero scandals is clear: you're not supposed to try on other people's hats. Yet that's what we're paid to do, isn't it? Step into other people's shoes, and try on their hats."[37][177]
Upon winning the 2019 Booker Prize, Bernardine Evaristo dismissed the concept of cultural appropriation, stating that it is ridiculous to demand of writers that they not "write beyond [their] own culture".[178]
If China is copying Western wokeness, it's to throw the weight of a united country around in the world, not to tear a nation apart. I'm reminded of 1980s talk about "anti-Sovietism." That campaign got nowhere: Russians are (for the most part) White and weren't terribly happy about being Soviet. China will have more luck playing the race card. The guilt and anguish of woke White Westerners aren't there, though
”It is pretty standard stuff. The CCP has to keep Chinese people from being like or seeing other people be like them.
“They need racial tension and racism to help maintain their hold on power.
“This is just what tribal regimes do.”
As seen by looking at our own nation and society.
Howard: "Because the model was designed by the artist to look strange and to trigger people like you into thinking the world has gone crazy."
Tell us more about how the antifa types are equivalent of the US soldiers that stormed Normandy and even deserve military retirement pay for the work they are doing (a position you defended passionately) after which you then argued, passionately, antifa is just a myth and doesnt even exist at all.
Discuss within the framework of "crazy" "triggering".
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