Real Men Are Scary!
YouTube is still (at this point in time anyway) a great place to catch up on pop culture all over the world...today, via Technorati's main page I caught a link to a video on YouTube that is a press conference where lead singer of Japanese boy band Kat-Tun makes an earth-shattering announcement:
All it took for me to look at Kat-Tun was the funny name and a pic that I could not identify.....
I read through all the comments on YouTube to get the gist of what's going on (since I don't speak Japanese)....apparently the lead singer is leaving the band for reasons that no one knows for sure. According to the comments, he says he's leaving to go to school--others have more darker suppositions, such as that he's gay or did gay porn, or something of that sort...
But I got to thinking about how girly-looking Jon Bon Jovi was when he first came out back in the '80's.
(actually, he went to high school with an old boyfriend, and I was friends with the keyboard player's sister--in New Jersey, there are less than six degrees of separation between any of us and members of Bon Jovi and Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band. The Jersey Music scene in the 80's was more incestuous than any southern state.)
The thing is, though, there are lots of young women--late teens and early 20's--for whom big ole hairy men are just too darned scary. Guys who are a bit fey are less threatening.
They make the *best* teen idols.
Guess that's why, at 11, I found hairy ole Burt Reynolds, the first male centerfold in Cosmopolitan, really quite icky and gross...whereas David Cassidy was just my speed (yes, I was boy-obsessed pretty early on.)
But that would change as I got older. By the time I was in my 20's (way back in the 80's) the fey guys were the icky ones, and the Manly men were much more appealing...which is why I never really liked Bon Jovi (who was only a year older than me)
The thing with Kat-Tun, though, reminds me of something I read years ago, about a type of Japanese theater, where the plays were acted out by all-female casts. The male parts were girls dressed in male drag, and many girls got crushes on them. It was a form of entertainment girls were allowed to attened and the crushes were never discouraged. I can't for the life of me, find any articles on it, although I did find this piece on Sinjuku Boys...
Men of the big ole hairy variety are often frightening to girls--until we grow up and learn how to control them ;-)
Fey guys, though, aren't a total loss. Sometimes they get better with age. Bon Jovi's actually gotten much better since middle age has set in--but there's still too much hair dye for my taste. So, I imagine that Kat Tun's lead singer, if he takes care of himself, could end up a very handsome man...
then again, you never know. could be gay. then, to women anyway, it won't matter what he looks like.
All it took for me to look at Kat-Tun was the funny name and a pic that I could not identify.....
I read through all the comments on YouTube to get the gist of what's going on (since I don't speak Japanese)....apparently the lead singer is leaving the band for reasons that no one knows for sure. According to the comments, he says he's leaving to go to school--others have more darker suppositions, such as that he's gay or did gay porn, or something of that sort...
But I got to thinking about how girly-looking Jon Bon Jovi was when he first came out back in the '80's.
(actually, he went to high school with an old boyfriend, and I was friends with the keyboard player's sister--in New Jersey, there are less than six degrees of separation between any of us and members of Bon Jovi and Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band. The Jersey Music scene in the 80's was more incestuous than any southern state.)
The thing is, though, there are lots of young women--late teens and early 20's--for whom big ole hairy men are just too darned scary. Guys who are a bit fey are less threatening.
They make the *best* teen idols.
Guess that's why, at 11, I found hairy ole Burt Reynolds, the first male centerfold in Cosmopolitan, really quite icky and gross...whereas David Cassidy was just my speed (yes, I was boy-obsessed pretty early on.)
But that would change as I got older. By the time I was in my 20's (way back in the 80's) the fey guys were the icky ones, and the Manly men were much more appealing...which is why I never really liked Bon Jovi (who was only a year older than me)
The thing with Kat-Tun, though, reminds me of something I read years ago, about a type of Japanese theater, where the plays were acted out by all-female casts. The male parts were girls dressed in male drag, and many girls got crushes on them. It was a form of entertainment girls were allowed to attened and the crushes were never discouraged. I can't for the life of me, find any articles on it, although I did find this piece on Sinjuku Boys...
Men of the big ole hairy variety are often frightening to girls--until we grow up and learn how to control them ;-)
Fey guys, though, aren't a total loss. Sometimes they get better with age. Bon Jovi's actually gotten much better since middle age has set in--but there's still too much hair dye for my taste. So, I imagine that Kat Tun's lead singer, if he takes care of himself, could end up a very handsome man...
then again, you never know. could be gay. then, to women anyway, it won't matter what he looks like.
posted by Tish Grier at 10:48 PM
4 Comments:
What you're thinking of is Takarazuka.
And if you want to know more then you can learn online, there's an excellent book by the same name:
Takarazuka: Sexual Politics and Popular Culture in Modern Japan by Jennifer Robertson
thanks so much! that's exactly what I was thinking of. When I first read about it, I was fascinated by it (as much as I was by geisha culture.) So, thanks for the book recommendation, too.
I can't help it - I'm still nuts about Bon Jovi. :)
I still get goofy over old pics of Danzig...I have not justification for that lack of taste ;-)
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