Cuteness and category

[imomus]

Living with a rabbit entails recognizing a series of "cute moments". They're mostly the moments when the rabbit, with utter fierceness and un-selfconsciousness, does something entirely stereotypical, like lying down suddenly in a characteristic posture, its hind legs stretched out, its tail taut, its eyes fixed and vacant yet alert. The thing that makes it cute is the rabbitness of it, the combination of relaxation and anxiety. Our rabbit is both a male and a prey animal, so it mixes the eternally timid alertness of a threatened beast low on the food chain with the swagger and confidence of a male. The interplay of those two contrasting stereotypes is also a source of comedy and "cuteness".

I was thinking about this in the light of yesterday's Gender Killer discussion. How desireable is it to "kill gender"? How liberating is it to stop relating to stereotypes? Is it even possible? (After all, gays and lesbians seem to use the stereotypes of gender just as much as anyone else does.) And do we renounce cuteness when we do it?

I scribbled some notes:

identity is limitation
identity is cute
limitation is cute
my identity
your identity
i want to be unlimited, but i want you to be cute... and limited
i want to be rounded, but i want you to be stereotypical
the relationship of cuteness to the categorical
things are cute when they behave instinctively, un-selfconsciously... when they approach the stereotypical
how can complexity ever compete, in the attractiveness stakes, with the rush of affectionate recognition we get when we see something stereotypical?

Okay, let's look at some of those ideas. Identity is limitation. This is confirmed in the realm of technology by the synthesizer. The more synths can do, the less they sound like synths. The more capable a synth is, the less cute it is. The cutest synths are the monophonic Moogs and Prophets made in the 70s. They're cute because they have a limited, stereotypical identity. We hear them, or see them, and think "That's a synth!" We love them for their limitation. They have a strong identity precisely because, in terms of range and capability, they're rather weak.

This establishes a link, perhaps an unexpected one, between identity and cuteness. When I find something cute, I find it attractive because it seems limited, stereotypical, determined by its category, even helpless. When Japanese women shout "kawaii!" it's reflexive on two sides: the women are acknowledging their own femininity by responding to something small, vulnerable and baby-shaped, but also acknowledging something limited, stereotypical and reflexive in the thing admired. It's cute because it is so much what it is, and can't help it. It's "concentrated essence of chihuahua", strictly observing its obligation to be what it is while we strictly observe our obligation to admire it.

But mightn't we have double standards? Mightn't we want complexity and individuality for ourselves, but cute limitation for others? Nobody wants to feel limited, after all. For instance, I pride myself on being culturally somewhat hybrid, born in Scotland, but much more than the stereotypical Scot. I pride myself on blurring my nationality, blurring my gender, blurring my class and my culture. I believe that I can "rise above" the circumstances of my formation, become rounded and complex, and be loved for that complexity. But has anyone ever been loved for their complexity? Don't we see, day in and day out, that simplicity and clear uncalculating categorical identity is far more "cute"?

And isn't it hypocritical of me to want to be loved for my complexity, but also love others for their simplicity? Because I can't deny that my attraction is somewhat generic. I am attracted to "Japanese art students". I like them to be more rather than less "Japanese". Once they started to become Japanese-French or Japanese-British or Japanese-American, I would start to find them less attractive, I think. I don't say this is morally right of me, but I observe it in myself. The cute and the generic are all tied up. I also like very feminine women, and once women start to mix up gender signifiers, to be tough and boyish, I find them less cute... even though I have a tendency to mix up gender signifiers myself! (Or do I find femininity enhanced by attempts to escape it? Those boyish girls are cute, but it's the moments when the mask slips and the act falters that are the cutest.)

So I aspire to be complex, but I can't help being attracted to the uncomplex. And perhaps I fail to see that when people find me cute, it's because, no matter how I dress, I am still helplessly male, helplessly bourgeois, helplessly Scottish. "Skirts can actually look great on men," said an article linked in yesterday's comments, filed in the Gender Issues section of the Guardian. "Unfortunately, most blokes simply aren't man enough to carry them off."

Most men "aren't man enough" to dress like a woman! The paradox suggests that category is all-powerful; in trying to escape it, we merely confirm it. That fatalism sounds depressing, but it does have a consolation attached. If, in the end, complexity is limited, then complexity is also cute.

Comments

[dandy-darvish.livejournal.com]

I'm attracted to morrocans, but here in holland you only see morrocans that dress and behave like blingbling west-europeans, all made up of logos and brands like burberry and armani. most of them don't want to be limited to their berber background. they don't want to come of as cute, but instead tough and strong.

bowie was loved for his gender/culture-blending.

[dandy-darvish.livejournal.com]

strangely its only the boys that adopt the european style of big logos and status symbol dressing. the girls are far more traditional in their dress, but they experimenting more with it: you sometimes see girls in beautiful colour combinations of headscarf and dress. its fashion muslim in a trad way!

[imomus.livejournal.com]

That's an interesting point about Bowie. He seems to have been one of the very few people to be loved for blurring rather than concentrating categories.

I'd make two observations about him. He's someone people tend to identify with rather than objectify. So we aspire to "be David Bowie" in the same way we aspire to be complex and rounded ourselves, even while demanding that others be simple and stereotypical.

Also, David Bowie is one of those people with so much inherent charm and attractiveness that they often embark on a strategy of "discouraging the weak". In other words, they make themselves grotesque (dressing in miniskirts, shaving their eyebrows) in order to repel all but their most loyal followers, but also to demonstrate their power to "revaluate all values" (as Nietzsche put it).

[dandy-darvish.livejournal.com]

it interesting that you tend to dress more experimental while getting older, while most people adopt a more traditional and formal style, weaken their once subcultural style, maybe still a bit gothic but less extreme, because its perceived as ridiculous to still dress AS IF you were young. (you can still see where their styole originated from, but its not there anymore, because society demands less extreme styles, "don't dress like that, you scare off our customers!")

I think I remember you said once that you used to dress as a old people do when you were a teenager.

[nickink.livejournal.com]

An excellent post, but when I think of cuteness, I think of images concerned with weakness, infancy, vulnerability, perhaps eliciting protective, maternalistic/paternalistic emotions from me. Surely, there are lots of things which are limited to their category in an uncomplicated and stereotypical way but are not at all cute?

[qscrisp.livejournal.com]

I don't think complexity is inherently unattractive - but maybe that's where I've been going wrong all these years.

If I think about what I find attractive, while it's true that cuteness can and often is attractive, it bores me very quickly. Complexity and unstereotypicalness are more compelling to me.

This is especially true the more extreme each characteristic gets. I find extreme cuteness only tolerable in animals and young children. In adults I find it either tedious or disturbing. Extreme complexity, on the other hand, is increasingly attractive to me.

I have no idea about people close to you, but do you suppose your fans find you attractive because they think you are stereotypical and cute? I would suggest not.

[martymartini.livejournal.com]

In my humble opinion, the best thing you wrote in a long time! I love to read that kind of stuff! Bravo!

[martymartini.livejournal.com]

PS: That must be because I`m limited, therefore cute. Ahem.

[qscrisp.livejournal.com]

I've just remembered that I once remarked to a friend that cuteness is a form of fascism.

"Then you must be Hitler," he responded.

I'm not sure what to make of that.

[nickink.livejournal.com]

I have no idea about people close to you, but do you suppose your fans find you attractive because they think you are stereotypical and cute? I would suggest not.

I see what you mean, but on the other hand, a couple of recent comments on Momus' blog have suggested that when the mask of complex, postmodern, term-coining, theorising Momus seems to have been dislodged to reveal a glimpse of wee, bourgeoise, Scottish Nick tangled in his puppetmaster's strings, we find the idea of the simplified stereotype endearing, even cute.

[mippy.livejournal.com]

I once saw an episode oof Trisha in which cross-dressers gave their wives a make-over to make them appear more 'glamorous and feminine'....

[jwm.livejournal.com]

In hacker circles, the “cuteness” of some piece of software, object or design tends to mean that it's clever and elegant in it's simplicity. Features tend to be cute because they're a nice touch that shows attention to detail.

But cuteness tends to imply a kind of novelty that's fleeting. Dali Clock (http://www.jwz.org/xdaliclock/) has a cute feature in that if you run several instances of it, the digits of each morph in lock step with one another. Neat, if you ever notice it. The iPod's smooth, seamless design is cute, but that wears off when you have to endure Apple's temperamental after sale service to get the battery replaced. Cuteness, in this sense, aspires to beauty when it manages an enduring appeal.

A curious thing about clever, simple designs is that they tend to be the products of processes that are work intensive, filled with false starts and cul-de-sacs and designs that didn't work out and never see the light of day. To others who work in that particular field, cuteness of design is simplicity, perhaps operating within necessary or deliberately chosen strictures that nevertheless signifies depth, complexity, talent, experience and a broad frame of reference on the part of the designer.

Perhaps cuteness in others can be an emergent property of their complexity?

[qscrisp.livejournal.com]

I thought about this after I posted my comment. Perhaps you're right, but don't you also think that a post-modern term-coining persona is rather limited and stereotypical, and if unattractive, then unattractive for those reasons?

[nickink.livejournal.com]

Is there a difference between how we understand American and British usages of 'cute'?

[nicepimmelkarl.livejournal.com]

i'm so cute. i'm so cute. i'm so cute. sheik your bootie, my son.

[stanleylieber.livejournal.com]

Also the blank canvas paints itself. Likely some of that complexity collapses into singular identity, even if each viewer gets something different out of the spectacle. Millions of Bowie fans sitting around, like Charles Manson with the Beatles, thinking, 'I know what he means, he's talking to me'.

[nicepimmelkarl.livejournal.com]

oops beauty.

some ideas:

[svenskasfinx.livejournal.com]

Maybe "gender blurring" would be a better term. Because if you kill gender you kill identity..

I thought it was a very thoughtful idea you had in mind when you said "gender blurring"..

Taking on some of your notes to my stream of conciousness state of mind and finding what it runs into:

identity is limitation: for the most part you can inject the thoughts of limitation to anything socially or culturally, natural or unnatural.

identity is cute: too general... identity identifies.. that's all.. if we are actually "cute" then so be it.. but if you happen to be me.. forget it.

limitation is cute: probably, that's why people buy dogs that can hardly stand up on their own, and perhaps that is the popularity of high heels.. the limitation. Cute is limiting too.. developing a character beyond "cute" may open doors, but close others though.. its based perhaps on personal taste.

my identity: my inner and outter mask, I can choose to share it or, choose not to... when I want to hide, I tend to attract more attention than I want though.

your identity: how I perceive you to be by what you look like, in spite of my efforts to find out exactly who you (the other) are.. I try to avoid sterio types within my mind, but people sometimes hem themselves into them. Its not my fault you (the other) wish to be identified by your sterio type but I made a valid attempt to cut though the ideas of what is to be expected by anyone.. by keeping an open mind and only judging you by what you say, not what you wear, (and possibly if you smell bad, to me.)

----------------------------

I do believe that it is liberating to escape "gender stereotypes" for me.. I don't like people going on about what they can and can not do socially as men or women..(even though they never consiously say it) they hem themselves into a roll of expectation and then enforce their rules on others... and we for the most part must obey these or have a problem within the culture we live in.

For example, although as a little girl, trying to earn money from jobs was a problem because I like more "manual labour" type of jobs.. I would work in the labour pool and temp services and be limit in work because they would not accept female workers on the construction sites. I understand some of the reasoning behind it; its about gender stereotypes, and if you are just a little boyish, its not ok, but if you do yourself a typical "dyke" who blurrs the gender lines to the point where your biological gender doesn't play any roll the chances would have been much higher in aquiring work where there was a shortage of men who were strong enough to perform typical light contruction tasks. (I mean there were some scrawny arsed men, smelling of drink, turning up at 5 am, like me who got the jobs.. I could easily have kicked their arses and I'm not a fighter)

No I don't want to be a man, but I want to work like one.. I don't want to resort to doing telephone answering, when I'm NOT designed for that.. I do not want to be a "stripper" either just to make a wage enough to live off of either... but that's what some societies do...

But it feels sad really when you do take a job, and find that its a monoculture of women...the wages are low, and the work is lowly.. lower paying than construction site jobs... its so cute.. its so limited.. no wonder why in some places woman and men complain that they have problems communicating with the opposite sex!

Boys play with boys, girls play with girls and occasionally.. they meet up to breed and then go their seperate ways...

I know I don't paint a nice picture of the place I used to live and work, but I think that's why I am so intersted in melting the bounderies between genders and ideas that people have around mythologies about men and women.

ah it seems that you struck a nerve in me!

[http://users.livejournal.com/_greengrass/]

I think the secret to being loved for complexity is to compartmentalize. This allows you a certain duality and limitlessness of form while at the same time allowing you to be stereotyped. People don't want simplicity, only recognizable characters. A single person can play the part of many characters, as long as he/she does not try to synthesize them and be more than one simultaneously.

Be a different person every morning. Many people call this self-betrayal, identitylessness, in fact, but all the many character can (and should) be simply variations on a single theme: the same image in a different medium.

This is just one of the reasons I love Bowie.

[nicepimmelkarl.livejournal.com]

i like your angry box icon.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Don't box me in!

[erelong.livejournal.com]

This post includes a great number of questions I'm consistently asking myself. It's heartening to find smeone who actually spends as much time as I do wrapped up in the confusion of questioning identity and stereotypes.

Also, I like your rabbit.

[badgerbag.livejournal.com]

Nonsense, you are totally cute. I mean, you have a little doll of yourself, and you're always floundering around in this cute macho-pomo haze as if surrounded by floating candy. Cute, cute cute!

[encyclops.livejournal.com]

Where does your icon come from?

[lord-whimsy.livejournal.com]

Self-limitation can invite a high degree of complexity, because these limitations force one to make smaller and smaller distinctions within this system, this endless variation on a simple theme.