G'day Penpals, Just listening to mellifluous Auntie Beeb whilst going through my evening PEN-L revelations when on comes a spot about thousands of Japanese girls spending their first year's savings on new eyelids and pointy noses. Coulda been interesting, of course - I've long suspected a problem ever since Kimba The White Lion; indeed the whole Japanese Anime corpus, right up to Denis's favourite, Evangelion, is peopled by cuties, hunks and spunks with unbelievably large round eyes and pointy noses. Waddup wit' that? - but the Beeb being the uncritical creature Michael Keaney has been warning us it has become, well, it wasn't.
Globalisation they called this self-loathing self-butchering. Look how it's allowing those poor maligned Eurasians back in from the cold, they trumpeted. Suddenly they're trendy! Well, yeah, that's good, natch. But not even a hint of irony as Mr Brit Reporter, Ms Japanese beautician, and Mr American expert called it stuff like successful marketing in the age of globalisation. To none of them apparently, had it occurred that hordes of Caucasian nymphs are not lining up to have folds taken out of their eyelids and points taken off their noses ... Sheesh! Rob.
