Stop The Presses! You Mean To Say Women Want To Break Out Of Stereotypes?

Interesting article in yesterday’s Guardian, profiling young Japanese author Hitomi Kanehara, whose first, best-selling novel, Snakes and Earrings, has supposedly shocked the country with its “violent and graphic opposition to the traditional cultural expectations of how Japanese women should be.” Reporter Angela Neustatter writes:

Kanehara is part of a burgeoning subculture of contemporary women expressing the same loud, emphatic message through fashion, graphics, comics, subversive graffiti, photography and fiction. It underscores a growing generational divide, a significant shift in values and attitudes.

Only later in the article does the trend supposedly embodied by this new author get placed in a more historical context. Worth a look.