The life of a Japanese
teenager is a strange and wonderful thing.
B-Style - a trend which
involves adopting all the features of a "black lifestyle" - is the
latest craze among Tokyo's daring young women.
Where once these girls
might have spent their money on skin whitening treatments, or dressed up as
china dolls, now they are passing their afternoons in the tanning salon, trying
to look like African-American hip-hop stars.
Hina, who works at a
trendy, hip-hop inspired boutique called Baby Shoop, is the poster girl for
B-Style.
When she's not at work,
she's across the road at the salon, getting her hair-braids done and topping up
her tan.
In a video for YouTube,
Hina attempted to explain the B-Style way of life, saying: "It is a
tribute to black culture, and also to their music, fashion and dance."
Apparently Hina used to
have pale skin, but then one day, she said: "in the second year of primary
school, I got frizzy hair. When I looked at black artists I found them very
cool."
In an interview which
appeared on Vice Magazine yesterday, it emerged that Hina is now so famous for
her B-Style that she gets recognised when she visits America.
But although Hina might
be on a mission to make her skin look darker, there are still plenty of
Japanese teenagers doing just the opposite.
A fresh crop of
Japanese photo editing applications have become available to smartphone users,
which use their skin-whitening function as the main selling point.
This phenomenon casts
an interesting light on how different races and cultures actually influence
each other in the globalised world of information. In some African countries
there is a trend of women who ‘beautify’ themselves by bleaching their skin
using products containing the dangerous compound hydroquinone.
It seems that hip hop’s
global ascendance is highlighting the beauty of being black. Maybe, one day,
some brothers and sisters will start to believe it.
Hina Hasunuma describes
the shop’s products as “a tribute to Black culture: the music, the fashion, and
style of dance.” Photo: Desiré van den Berg
Vice News
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