Catty Remarks

Jaime Scholnick’s upcoming exhibit at POST gallery, “Hello Kitty Gets a Mouth,” sounds like the most ignorant example of the Ugly Liberal American going overseas to another country and wagging her disapproving finger at an unfamiliar culture (“If Kitty Could Talk, She’d Mouth Off,” by Scarlet Cheng, Aug. 18).

It is patronizing and rude of her to suggest that modern Japanese women do not have any control or self-awareness over their own existence. The example she cites of the oppression of Japanese women (the student who is beaten up by her boyfriend) could very well be an isolated incident that is taken out of context just to suit Scholnick’s agenda. Domestic violence pervades all cultures, not just Japanese.

Asians in general and Japanese in particular have very few universally recognized pop-culture icons except for Godzilla or Hello Kitty. Scholnick’s mocking of the Hello Kitty character, and its popularity within Japanese female culture, is condescendingly racist toward the very people she is supposedly sympathetic to.

SHAUN CHANG

San Gabriel