Gwen Stefani, The Harajuku Girls Backup Dancers and Some Angry Female Asian Celebrity Critiques

The Harajuku Girls are four young girls, Maya Chino [Love], Jennifer Kita [Angel], Rino Nakasone [Music] and Mayuko Kitayama [Baby]. Hired by artist Stefani in 2004 as backup dancers for her albumn, Love. Angel. Music. Baby. Since then, the girls continue on with Gwen Stefani as her friends and her backup dancers, preforming in such music videos as "What You Waiting For?", "RIch Girl", "Hollaback Girl", "Luxurious", "Crash", and so far my favorite, "Wind It Up."
They also were in the "Now That You Got It", and "The Sweet Escape."

Recently, Stefani's Harajuku girls faced some critisisms from stand-up comedian, Margret Cho in her blog titled, "Harajuku Girls", Oct. 2005.
In her blog she confesses that she did try to like the Harajuku girls as fellow asians, but they were only re-inforcing racial stereotypes associated with the asian population. She says that these stereotypes are "cute sometimes" but she wanted to point out the "minstrel show."
She says that she'll take these girls flaunting themselves on stage in Japanese school girl uniforms over the usual trend in enertainmnet of nothing at all from the asian race in the media.

Even more critisism came from author MiHi Ahn in a story called "Gwenihana" from
in 2005/2007, published on Salon.com.
She calls Gwen's first solo albumn a "riotous jumble of everything from 80's bubblegum pop to hip-hop to "Fiddler on the Roof" gone mad on a pirate ship."
This would be how I describe my personal style, Bravo!
This article accredits the word "Harajuku" with Stefani's interpretation of Tokyo street-fashion in the Harajuku District.
I would call this a fabulous interpretation then, because when I google "harajuku" I see some awesome and innovative trends emerging in fashion today.
The author continues her critisisms by saying that the girls "shadow [Stefani] wherever she goes... they silently vogue in the background of interviews like living props;" Going on and on to say, that the girls are everywhere, in Stefani's videos, her photo-ops and all the while maintaining their "we're not worthy, we're not worthy" pose."
Here is the meat of it, this is what she actually thinks is true about the Harajuku girls; "She's [Stefani] taken Tokyo hipsters, sucked them dry of their street cred, and turned them into China dolls." I haven't been on the trail of these girls very long, only a matter of hours really, but even I can tell that these girls are gangsters. Their happy and they are powerful. They've got it made.

Many of the messages in Gwen Stefani's lyrics are focused on the empowerment of woman EVERYWHERE. She's singing, and she's obviously not from Harajuku, Tokyo. She created a term to describe the origional, up-beat shocking progressive way to communicate one's individualism to the world by their choices in fashion, accessories and a lot of fun make-up, and gave this once undescribable entity surfacing within the contemporary world and freakin' gave it a name! Success! At Last!!!
I like the name.
I think we should keep the name. It's snazzy.
Point being is that previously, I never knew what to call my style, everyone usually has one word they can associate with their style to describe it to someone in a coversation; "hip", "goth," "Punk," or something.
It has always taken me like fifteen minutes to tell someone HOW I look the way I do. What possessed me to dress the way that I do. "Who on God's green Earth" would wear leg-warmers in July?!?!? I would, that's who. And so do the Harajuku girls. More power, sisters.

As for the Critisisms, their jealous.
Any girl that doesn't like who they are would be.

Gwen's stage performance.
Mixed-Media Visual Performace Art.
It's a fashion show, a dance performace, singing and rallying for women's empowerment.
Very well rounded, there.
Harajuku Girls as backup dancers to the very blonde, and almost blindingly fair Gwen Stefani,
Contrasts are enhanced and elaborated upon through the over-exagerated differences between the two races, highlighting the exact same beautiful and negative aspects, I think of both races elequently meshing together to form a vision of unity for every woman of the world to embrace.
I wish there were more harajuku girls, meaning BFF's for life and that I had a 'crew' to be self-indulgent with at the mall and sit on the ground in the middle of a busy time square with my steamer case and my hair clips and make-up and create ART, in real-time, 3D and completely interactive, customizable- Variations on fashion art is left to the designer, which is everyone uniquely and individually at heart.

As a newbie, I second the motion of this here council to vote the term "Harajuku" into the English Dictionary as meaning "progressive and innovative street-fashion inspired by Tokyo street-fashion and made known by the Artist Gwen Stefani and her Harajuku Girls."

How do you like that?

And I don't even think I like her new albumn. I had to watch half the videos on mute to focus my attention on how beautiful the art in the video was presented.
So no, I'm not bias and though I just found myself creating a blog semi-dedicated to her cause in the fashion struggle here on the US homefront, I cannot say I could have ever seen this occuring in my future had I tried, I was never a real big fan. Wait. Scratch that, I was like 10 and her first album as front woman of NoDoubt freaggin' rawked socks, people. I liked that. But her solo attempt has not gotten a full playback from me yet, so I haven't yet developed an opinion for that.

But argue me not that she's brought us a name for something that fun, cool and economically stimulating for girlfriends to do together and forget icky shit like sex and having babies when your twelve. I commend that woman, she's made quite a fashionable accomplishment.

My vote- 6 Socks

For more on the mentioned stories, check Links and other helpful Google features for this site, or simply google the authors names for their whole stories, instantly.

The Cincy Harajuku Girl is out.
"Shadow Hide You." -Oblivion [Freaking Rawks!!!]

Harajuku Ninjas?

Harajuku is the common name for the area around Harajuku Station in the Shibuya Ward of Tokyo, Japan; Harajuku is the name used to describe any of the unique fashion trends that are found in this area. Harajuku is a trend made up of many other kinds of trends, but all are extreme and attract a lot of attention and most are usually regarded as being very 'unusual'.

The Harajuku culture in Japan is known for it's street fashion and there are many subcultures within and part of the Harajuku culture. Each have their own style adding to the Harajuku style description. These include Gothic Lolita, Ganguro, Gyaru, Kogal, manga (coseplay) and Decora.

The Cincy Harajuku Ninjas are dedicated to just this, locating emerging fashion trends on the fringe of innovation and reporting them out for your comments.

Send us leads, we want to know where the emerging fashion trends in Cincinnati are coming from and where we can get them or how to re-create them.