THE IMPURE AND GIRLY

Dave Navarro, Media Theorist:

And then now as an adult, seeing it kind of come back into the forefront of culture even more so then it did back then, with young, adult women, generally speaking a lot of them have very secretive dark pasts that force them to embrace something unique and pure and girly, if you will. There's a duality that's inherent in that which is interesting and fascinating to me.

The image itself is more of a symbol of darkness to me than anything else. Because you can take one person who's really dark and they're into really dark things, but it's the person who gravitates toward the light to hide away from the darkness that's actually more intriguing. A good example of that would be the serial killer John Wayne Gacy doing paintings of Bambi or doing paintings of himself as a clown or the Seven Dwarfs. There's such a severe contrast between the dark and the light, that's the type of intellect that I find incredibly fascinating.

And also for me personally, my mother was murdered when I was 15 and I'm a recovering drug addict, and so I am no stranger to the darkness. And again, I don't want to make a blanket statement and upset anybody, but I would say in about 75% of cases, adult fans of Barbie and Hello Kitty and things of that nature, there's usually a past of either abuse or divorce or maybe sexual abuse, eating disorders, something that can easily be looked up in the DSM IV, which is basically the psychiatric diagnostic manual of disorders.

Yes, Kawaii insists on something to an insane or violent degree, but probably what it insists on can't be pinned down as easily as Navarro thinks. What is disturbing about it exists because of a defiant, liminal quality that lends itself so easily to projection.


It is monstruous.