How Sinophobia Misattributes Trends

It turns out one of the world's leading economic superpowers will produce kids who dress cool too. Shocker.

By virtue of social media, youth culture has become more globally minded than ever before, and there’s little doubt that this newfound, highly personality-based interconnectedness, along with the rise of the influencer, has both set and shared international trends with audiences well beyond their home audiences. In the case of the United States, one particular and enduring fascination has found new form in the contemporary mass media landscape: the endless drive for Asian goods. The Western love and obsession with Asia and Asian products is a long and sordid one, with a longstanding air of xenophobic hierarchy and entitlement. Historically, this has been tightly associated with the philosophy of Orientalism, a historical and historiographic way of thought pioneered by Western academics and colonial governments, who saw Asian cultures as temporally untethered, exotic and primitive.

Though this baggage has not wholly left us, it’s perhaps fairer to say that present youth adoption of Chinese, Korean and Japanese beauty and style trends reflects acknowledgement of their own respective youth cultures, particularly subcultures. With the influx of Western-inspired and cross-cultural aesthetics in the region during the past century, along with persistent American military presence throughout East and Southeast Asia, these trends also seen as somehow more “accessible” to American audiences. This sentiment moreso reflects the perceived, extreme difference between broadly “Western” and Asian cultural sensibilities.

Appreciation for these trend styles is also not equal between countries of origin. For example, Korean and Japanese cultural imports are the most amenable to American audiences, no doubt due to the longstanding American occupation and later military presence throughout the 20th century, now a softer-power system which ties both countries to the production and economic power of America. This neocolonial relationship also means that these cultures are considered the most accessible to American audiences. Thus, the influx of imports such as Anime, Harajuku subcultural fashion, K-Dramas and K-Pop and Korean youth fashion, along with widespread metropolitan interest in both cultures’ respective foods (within a very narrow lens) have fundamentally influenced the youth culture of the 2010s and 2020s.

Chinese cultural exports, however influential, have not been offered the same due diligence. Due to longstanding Sinophobia carrying well into the present American economic rivalry with China, the enduring perception between these three primary exporters is that, while Korean and Japanese trends are chic and accessibly “exotic”, Chinese trends are either rebranded as Korean or Japanese, painted as ridiculous or extreme, or disregarded as taking influence from other East Asian styles or trends. Cultural exchange and recursive influence is part of how these trends form, though it’s presence is often overstated here and understated in other trend contexts.

Among the most well known misconception online is that “Douyin makeup” – so called due to its mainstream appeal on Chinese Tiktok analogue, Douyin – is equivalent to popular trends in mainstream K-beauty, emphasizing soft pinks, browns, shimmers and natural-looking lashes. The term has gained its own extreme connotation in the American usage, specifically looking towards makeup with large, drawn-on lashes and an exaggerated aegyo sal (under-eye) shape. Regardless, though there is some commonality between Chinese and Korean beauty trends, the Douyin style is particular to the Chinese social media landscape. In Alternative spaces, a similar misattribution has occurred with Chinese streetwear and alternative fashion, especially the Chinese popular “Yabi” street style, which freely combines styles from a number of subcultures to create a lightly alternative look, and Dopamine Dressing, which is often misattributed to Japanese Decora Kei, as both feature bright colors and whimsical accessories.

In similar kind, other Chinese exports, especially those with popularity outside of the country of origin, are often misidentified; the distinction between manhua (Chinese comics) and manhwa (Korean comics) and manga (Japanese comics) often leads to misattribution of popular Chinese manhua series. C-beauty and Chinese skincare products are often mislabeled as Korean due to the more positive association with Korean beauty products and quality. Alternative or street-fashion based Chinese fashion influencers and models, whose images are frequently reposted from Chinese social media sites to Western ones, are also commonly misidentified as other ethnicities. The simple fact is that Chinese cultural capital is less accepted in American mass media markets, and its’ influence is underrepresented.

Things do seem to be changing, however. Ongoing dialogue, as well as international communities forming between fashion subcultures, more commonly, specifically identify and share information about Chinese trends, and Chinese trends more often come to Western audiences unchanged. Overwhelmingly, what this proves is that American mass media supremacy is an important, and often pernicious tastemaker in the global metropoles. Even so, the wild, unpredictable, and hellishly fast trend cycles in modern youth cultures seems to build bridges between disparate social media populations, with the main downside being the mound of junk fast fashion we’re all leaving behind in the process.

Take me back home!

Oh, oops, nothing here.