Sometimes retro just sucks.

Ahh, the NYT Sunday Styles does it again.

This morning, the Times featured an article about another set of Brooklyn hipsters, doing something cool, edgy, retro, hipper than anything you or I could ever dream up. Yup-it’s retro porn. Lo-tech with no photoshop.

The folks from Jacques fancy themselves purveyors of “America’s only new luxury erotic magazine; a modern re-imagining of the
classic men’s magazines of yesteryear. We celebrate a return to the
origins of the pulp title; offering edgy opinion, arousing interviews
and fiery fiction blended with unparalleled pictorials illustrating the
real beauty of real women.” (via)

(Is it telling to know that one of their advertisers is American Apparel, perhaps one of the sleaziest companies known to humankind?)

But that is not my issue with them. Porn? Who cares? Lo-tech, high-tech–it’s just not my thing.

My issue is this, quoted from the NYT article today:  “The Fall 2010 issue, which will reach newsstands this week, has an Asian theme and includes articles about massage parlors and martial arts.” YES-it actually says this!! WTF!

The Asia Issue includes such riveting articles as Kung Fu Cinema, and Sex in Asia. Cutting edge stuff, I know.

Here’s what I can comfortably show you of the cover of The Asia Issue:

Yup-Geisha face, and a half-worn kimono. Truly the face of Asian women today, don’t you think? “Real Beauty of Real Women”? I don’t think so.

It’s nothing new to recognize that Asian women are fetishised. But that’s the problem with it. This is STILL happening? Does retro-styling mean that we have to employ old imagery and stereotypes? Is this the only option available to us?

It’s something we talk about a lot at Japanistic. In fact, we jokingly say that Japanistic is “cool Japanese stuff, without the porn.” When we compare what we’re doing with a lot of the other Japanese product sites, it’s fair to say that many of them employ that same fetish-based imagery.

It’s upsetting to see that a new group of hipsters is doing this too. (Need I mention that the husband and wife team behind Jacques are not ethnically Asian?)

And you know what NYT? You are equally guilty here for lauding the work of folks who utilize this vision of ethnically Asian women. Nothing about what is being done here is clever, edgy or cool. It might be retro, but sometimes, retro just sucks.