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Muted Echaos

Charaspat Krairiksh

Consuming Cuteness: The Constructed Phenomenon

Somerset House’s current CUTE exhibition does not hold back on all things feline and fluffy as it maxes out on a sprawling collection of adorable products that has captured the consumerist imagination throughout the years. From fluffy walls to rooms in pastel purple and pink bean bags, the exhibition tries to capture the elusive power of “cuteness” as a cultural phenomenon and money-making monster by creating its own eye-catching installations.


Collection of china cats. CUTE exhibition. Somerset House, 2024.

Visitors pass through rooms and rooms seemingly designed to be shared on social media. One room glows neon red except for the whiteness of the Hello Kitty dolls hanging in their hundreds off the walls. Another blasts Katy Perry’s ‘Teenage Dreams’ behind purple curtains like a romanticized scene from a girl’s sleepover party.

 

But as the exhibition mainly focuses on cuteness in its purely aesthetic, mass-produced currency, how did the modern concept of “cute” come about? And what makes us have that unexplainable but instinctive “Awww!” reaction to a baby, puppy, or that baby Yoda plushie we saw on sale?

 

Cuteness as a Psychological Mechanism

 

In the 1940s, ethologist Konrad Lorenz coined the term ‘baby schema’ (kindchenschema), which was used to explain how features like a large head, large eyes, chubby cheeks and a small nose in baby mammals trigger a caregiving response in adults. It’s the babies’ survival mechanism and appeal for parental protection, shall we say, for young mammals with little means to fend for themselves in the big bad world. Seeing cute babies with kindchenschema features trigger the parts of our brains associated with attention and reward processing, making adults want to care for and protect infants- even those that are not their own. It’s practically an automatic reaction- our brains go “Awww!” even before our vocal chords can articulate it.


Boss Baby 2, 2021.

And that’s what makes cuteness such a powerful marketing tool. Cute images and products play on our neurological instincts to pay attention to adorable things- it grabs our attention, time, and money.

 

Despite these psychological predispositions to protect and look at babies however, the concept of “childhood” was not always cherished. High child mortality rates throughout the centuries meant that being a child was more about being able to survive the next plague and helping your village maximise the annual crop yield than spending those youthful years in blissful innocence.

 

Historical Perception of Children in Western Culture

 

Medieval paintings of ‘The Virgin and Child’ make it clear that babies were not always known for their adorability. During this period, babies and toddlers were depicted in art as small adults, based on the perception that children -and specifically baby Jesus- were born perfectly formed and unchanged from childhood to adulthood. Later, Puritans -in complete contradiction- believed that children were born sinful and in desperate need of redemption. This, of course, was based on the Christian idea that humans are born inherently evil because of the original sin.


Damatian/Venetian. Altarpiece of the Virgin Mary. National Gallery, c.1400.

In the 18th century however, society’s prevailing view towards children changed; they were now seen as innocent beings who are later corrupted by the world as they grow older. Based on John Locke’s idea that children were born as ‘blank slates’ (tabula rasa), education is therefore key in instilling things like virtue and rationality. Children were encouraged to play and explore with the belief that balancing this freedom with self-restraint would create the ideal reasonable individual. By the 19th century, lower child mortality rates and lower birth rates meant that childhood was now seen as a cherished experience. Similarly, technological advances meant that things like children’s clothes, toys, and books could be mass-produced, further fueling small and infantile products specifically designed for children.

 

At the same time, while animal domestication has been in practice since the Paleolithic age, household “pets” as we know today was only normalised in 18th and 19th centuries Europe when farm animals and household animals became distinctly separated. Years of selective breeding pets show the powers of kindchenschema in full action, as dogs ears become floppier, eyes bigger, faces smaller -to the point where pugs are now having trouble breathing.

 

These cultural changes therefore explain how public perception towards things like babies and animals have changed throughout history into something that we would now associate with cuteness. But while the word “cute” in English has existed since 1731, today’s idea of “cute” as a mass consumerist behemoth has its roots more firmly planted in the explosion of kawaii culture that started Japan in the 1970s.

 

Kawaii Culture

 

Kawaii, or ‘cute culture’ in English generally refers to all things considered ‘charming, sweet, childish, or naïve’, and can be traced back to several significant trends in the 1970s Japan.

 

Teenage schoolgirls at the time started using mechanical pencils to create “cute” writing styles known as marumoji, using finer horizontal lines and adding small hearts, stars, and images to their writing. This was a radical contrast to the thicker, sharper lines produced by brushstrokes in Japanese calligraphy. Stationary products with cute, printed characters became more popular and in 1975, Sanrio began selling Hello Kitty products with the anthropomorphic cat printed on notebooks, pens, and rubbers.

 

By the 1980s, this form of writing was widely adopted by manga magazines and series. Shojo manga in particular, were specifically aimed at girls and produced images of ‘large-eyed, round-faced’ characters like those in Sailor Moon and the Candy Candy comic books.

 

But it was only after the economic crisis in Asia in the 1990s when Japanese kawaii products really took off in an irreversible tide of all things cute. Consumers, it seemed, longed for products that were comforting and aesthetically powerless in a financially cold and hostile environment. Hello Kitty led the global charge, recording $96 million in profit in North and South America in 2002.


Collection of Hello Kitty dolls. CUTE exhibition. Somerset House, 2024.

And Hello Kitty’s global appeal may have a curious root back to John Locke’s view of children as tabula rasa. According to Sanrio’s public relations manager Kazuo Tohmatsu, Hello Kitty’s large face and no mouth creates a blank canvas for consumers to impose their own emotions onto- she ‘doesn’t judge. She lets you feel how you feel without forcing you to question why.’ She’s an ‘emotional blank slate’, as one Sanrio designer tells Roland Nozomu Kelts, author of Japanamerica: How Japanese Pop Culture Has Invaded the US.

 

Images of adorable, vulnerable, childlike cute characters have therefore always had an enigmatic power over our heartstrings- and purchasing decisions. From our neurological predispositions and changing cultural attitudes towards children and animals, it was therefore only a matter of time that all things cute would take over the world.


Catch Somerset House’s CUTE exhibition, open until 14th April 2024.

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