Cultural Observation #3: Into "Cute"

There is one English word that any Taiwanese teenager is bound to know: cute.  They are all about cute here. Advertisements are littered with pokemon-ish cartoons, girls' i-phone covers have large plastic bunny ears, and the majority of the population owns buggy-eyed bred lap dogs.  

With the “cute” obsession has come an interesting phenomenon: Playboy brand is super popular here. I know--they have a clothing brand? Who knew Playboy sold anything other than magazines, bunny ears, and mansion admission tickets, but since arriving in Taiwan, I frequently see people sporting shoes, frames, and clothes all stamped with the bow-tie wearing bunny. There are entire Playboy clothing stores here with not a magazine or leopard print robe in sight, so if you ask people, “What’s Playboy?” they don’t know it as anything other than a clothing brand. My opinion why Playboy made it big in Taiwan—the bunny. I used to think he was cute before I realized that he was a symbol of big nekked boobs and booties. Anyhow… just a theory.  

 

Frankly, I think these figures are a little freakish, but this is the kind of "cute" stuff that the Taiwanese are obsessed with. If I had to chose though, I would say the striped one with the fuzzy stuff on his face is the cutest.