hololive VTuber Takanashi Kiara revealed a brand new outfit final month: a Eighties aerobics ensemble that ties into one in every of her songs, the vaporwave retro–themed “Fever Evening.” The look has confirmed to be a highly regarded design with followers, and I’m no exception. However placing apart private style, one factor I discover intriguing is that whereas the costume efficiently evokes the 80s, Kiara’s hips and thighs replicate a way more modern magnificence customary.
For higher or worse, the Western customary for a way girls (particularly white girls) have been “supposed” to look within the 80s was massive breasts, tiny waist, slender hips, skinny legs, and small butt. There’s a purpose “Child Received Again” is written as a rebuttal to a dominant cultural sentiment.
That is much more the case in relation to the enduring aerobics put on of the interval. There’s a well-known YouTube add of an aerobics championship, and it’s a unending parade of match and smiling of us in spandex displaying off their slim decrease our bodies.
Nowadays, nevertheless, extensive hips and large butts are in. Individuals on-line use phrases like “thicc” and “gyatt” with optimistic connotations, Instagram fashions swing on this course, and Kiara to some extent aligns with these present values. Her default design has extra outstanding hips, and she or he even bought the bottom of her 3D mannequin modified to be extra shapely and nearer to her non-virtual self—an improve that has acquired further consideration in her “Chimera” music video.
The Fever Evening outfit, as form-fitting as it’s, emphasizes this side of Kiara much more. And slightly than seeing it as untrue to the Eighties, artists have embraced it, typically exaggerating her proportions additional nonetheless. In a means, it makes all the present fanart depict a form of (not unwelcome) anachronism.
The best way that followers have proven their love for Fever Evening aerobics Kiara simply has me serious about how magnificence requirements can change—not solely over time, but in addition throughout cultures. The 80s “splendid determine” won’t be modern in 2024, but it surely may very well be seen in a unique hololive marketing campaign earlier this yr: the hololive Manufacturing x Cheer Up collab in Taiwan. The promotional artwork was created by native artist Yanni, and it’s very clear that the ladies’ proportions are totally different from their respective official designs.
In a means, the mix 80s aerobics outfit with present magnificence requirements—manifested within the type of Takanashi Kiara—actually hits residence the best way nostalgia for an older time doesn’t essentially imply each side of that bygone period is revived at equal ranges. We’re seeing a snapshot of a time that’s itself wanting backwards, and if that’s most readily depicted within the type of massive thighs in scorching pink, so be it.
PS: Right this moment is Kiara’s birthday—stream “Fever Evening!”
