A thread from one of my favorite Twitter people got me thinking…
About cuteness in a dreary world
About escaping from heartbreak and disappointment to pinks and rainbows
About maintaining a connection to purity in ourselves as we fade to grey
May we all find delight in this trash can fire life. Here’s where I find some of mine.
Baby Yoda
The thread I mentioned at the outset of this newsletter from @meakoopa (one of my greatest Twitter loves)
The thread talks about the way Baby Yoda went mega super viral (which I am deeply here for; I love The Child an inordinate amount). And how that mega viral thing has to do with there being a factor of not-cuteness, like just a little bit. He’s a little bumpy. The Child was an animatronic, and that helped keep him a little jaunty and awkward, and thusly sweet to the degree the audience wanted to protect him.
Those big wide eyes, and the little outstretched hand. A thousand hearts cried out to save him. The Mandalorian answered the call.
(Don’t say shit about the charge on my phone— mind you’re own.)
Hello Kitty
Have you watched Netflix’s The Toys That Made Us? It’s pretty cool. The Hello Kitty episode had some info I didn’t know, and it was a great refresher on what I was familiar with!
Hello Kitty is literally the ship that launched what is now the Sanrio armada. She is the epitome of childish girly cute. She is soft and considerate. A beacon of innocence, one that is adaptable to our various facets as people.
For someone who is uhhh… not soft, nor particularly gentle (I’ve recently begun referring to myself as a wild horse) the life line that Hello Kitty offers is one to a well-maintained image of gentility that I can’t manufacture on my own.
YRU
This is where we start to veer into what Anthony called in the thread above, “kawaii theory - that the truly cute must be a little ugly.” YRU shoes hit strong cute points:
pastels
little decorations, often celestial in nature
shiny & sparkly
They also hit some significant ~little ugly~ points:
bulky
exaggerated platforms
unusual shapes, and just generally unusual (and we know how the general public responds to things outside the normal; i.e. not well.)
I love them, but have yet to be able to talk myself into buying a pair.
Deco girl hair
Kawaii is a Japanese word, for any of you who have been wondering what the fuck is up so far this newsletter. It literally just means cute. It is a word Americans (and I suppose any other English speakers that heavily consume our media) associate with Harajuku girls and the cuter, girlier iterations of their fashions.
Deco girls are like the logical conclusion of adult cuteness, especially in a society regarded to be as buttoned-down as Japan. Subversive and a riot and fun, damn anything else to hell.
Dollightful
One of my favorite accounts on YouTube. Her dropping a video is an EVENT.
Dollightful lives in South Korea, works for a video game company creating characters, and in her free times crafts these WILD detailed, super cool dolls that are often mod’ed Monster High dolls. She takes what are already pretty cool dolls and blows Interesting out of the water. She is an artist working through all sorts of factions of what cute is, with her art in these dolls. If you need something soothing and still able to hold your attention, I’d highly recommend these videos.
The particular brand of visual cute here is secondary to how cute Dollightful’s sweetness as a channel host is.
Toys as a way to let yourself enjoy things
I read a thread on Twitter a few months back (and therefore will not be linking it, because I don’t even know where to begin to look for it and its waaaaaay too far back in my likes to dig out) talking about growing up in poverty and all the little normal things you don’t get.
One recurring refrain was the toys they craved and couldn’t get, that they then bought for themselves as adults. One person in the thread even mentioned their therapist had encouraged her to buy toys as a way to let herself relax about being so obsessed with being a good adult after seeing authority figures be so bad at it.
Now, I grew up pretty poor, but never lacked for stuffed animals, which is interesting looking back on. I’m not sure how we floated that. But I don’t know how much Beanie Babies were in their heyday.
All that to say, perhaps now is the time to let a little cute into your life.