ManicDDaily

I thought I would post a little dose of cuteness today: cute little ponies meeting each other in a barely fenced field, seemingly not bothered by cute little cars and trucks zooming by (one with giraffe, one with elephant.) The scale is completely out of whack–some snails and bunnies almost the size of the big rigs–but that doesn’t seem to matter in terms of overall effect, to the extent that the drawing has one.

Still, the drawing set me thinking about cuteness. I have a soft spot for it (as anyone who knows my pics can attest.) Even if I try to do more “serious” art, the eyebrows start to take a certain bemused tilt, the buildings a certain curvature, and cuteness makes its imprint.

However, I recently heard a program on the BBC about young Chinese women newly flocking to plastic surgery–nose jobs, eye widening, and even the slight pointing of their ears; all designed to make their faces look slimmer, but also, apparently, more like the faces of Manga figures.

Which made me think a bit about the different kinds of cuteness–clunky cuteness–the cuteness of an old lady in a lavender hat or a child in a hastily homemade Halloween costume–and slick cuteness, which (in my mind) tends to be commercial, treacly, slick. Commercial cuteness also seems caught in stereotype, while the clunky kind may try to mimic a stereotype, but somehow falls short, due to awkwardness, or some other (to my mind) happy accident.

So, here’s a dose, I hope, of clunky cuteness. Have a good day.

This entry was posted on August 21, 2021 at 11:41 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments. You can comment below, or link to this permanent URL from your own site.