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Atleast that is short and contemporary. Real kimonos are sexist restraints for women, no matter how beautiful or graceful, they restrict movement, and they also are markers of a woman's age, eligibility, and class status.
Geisha culture
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Atleast that is short and contemporary. Real kimonos are sexist restraints for women, no matter how beautiful or graceful, they restrict movement, and they also are markers of a woman's age, eligibility, and class status.
Geisha culture is very interesting. These are actually women with power. They spend their lives training, learning different artistic skills like musical instruments, dancing, conversation on a more intellectual level, and are not "prostitutes". They are vanguards of culture from the past. Most of the Geishas in Japan today are not authentic, it was a lifestyle. They were replaced my modern night club type hostesses wearing traditional costumes.
I find it odd that as soon as white military guys get to Hawaii they look for an Asian girlfriend believing them to be submissive. Nothing could be further from the truth, as they soon find out.
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I dunno, a geisha would probably argue that her kimono are easy to move around in once she gets past the initial stages of maiko-dom, since she's trained to move in them. And house wives certainly didn't wear all of the fancy trappings that maiko and geisha wore; back when kimono were every-day wear, they just flung them on and went about their business. I think it's the shoes that are the real bitch for maiko; those 6-inch wedges hurt me just looking at them!
There are real geisha in Japan today--they go through the training, turning their collar, etcetera, with the notable exception of Tokyo geisha--but Westernization, the redistribution of feudal money, and the invention of the much cheaper bar hostess has cut down on their numbers drastically. Most people who DO go to tea houses don't want geisha, anyway; they want maiko because of their doll-like appearance. That's why modern geisha often hold "primary" job. It's a shame, really, but I suppose that changing times mean a change in entertainment. :/
One of the major downsides IS that loss of power concept. The world of geisha really is a woman-dominated world, where men have no purpose except to dress the geisha (if the dresser was a man), sell them products, or give them money. On the other hand, one could argue that Japanese women have way more power than they did pre-WWII, although they are still far from receiving equal treatment.
And yeah, the notion of the "subservient" Asian woman is kind of hysterical. Maybe a woman would be subservient to her same-race husband while they lived in their village, because there are dozens, hundreds, maybe even thousands of people around them making sure they "save face," but I have a hard time imagining an Asian woman marrying a white man without the expectation that those pressures would be relieved from her. I mean, traditionally, a Japanese woman controls the money and gives her husband an "allowance," a thought that has to make a misogynist's stomach churn.
