The Problem With Ganguro in My Dress-Up Darling
My Dress-Up Darling! is one of 2022 winter season's standout romance and slice of life titles, and it has garnered a lot of positive attention for its storyline about anime fans who love to cosplay. It has been a fun and refreshing show following in a long line of romance anime featuring an unassuming main character and a manic-pixie dream girl heroine, but the show oversteps some serious boundaries in one of its later episodes!
In the 11th episode of My Dress-Up Darling!, Marin wishes to cosplay a sharp-toothed thief from one of her favorite shows; however, the character has much darker skin than Marin, which poses a cosplay challenge. Marin; who wants to be as close to a real-life depiction of a character as possible, mulls over how to overcome the glaring deviation from the character that her lighter skin poses, but the way she goes about it falls into a well-known issue; blackface.
What My Dress-Up Darling Can Teach You About Cosplay
«Blackface» is a term used to refer to the use of dark makeup to mimic the appearance of black people, but it has also been used more recently to refer to makeup used to mimic the appearance of those who are darker-skinned in general. It has history in minstrelsy, which has roots in 19th century America as a form of racist entertainment. These racist depictions of black people often featured dark skin and exaggerated facial features such as thick pink lips and flaring noses.
What Kitagawa Marin performed in episode 11 of My Dress-Up Darling! is known in Japan as «ganguro», a form of darkened makeup or tanning that was also often paired with flashy accessories and fashion to complete the aesthetic many fans and Japanese people know as the «gyaru».
«Gyaru» is simply a Japanese pronunciation of
Read more on gamerant.com
