ABSTRACT

During the summer of 2015, a series of events at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston called Kimono Wednesdays encouraged visitors to try on a replica of the kimono Claude Monet's wife wore in her husband's 1876 painting La Japonaise and then pose for photos in front of the painting. This seemingly benign act of appreciation sparked protests from those who considered the events as perpetuating an exoticizing imperialist gaze and orientalizing stereotypes. This paper contextualizes this controversy by examining the history of white women cross-dressing as Japanese, how it constitutes a form of naturalized whitewashing linked to the pleasure of consumption through its connections to Gilbert and Sullivan's The Mikado (1885), and how the same act for Asian American women at the turn into the twentieth century is fraught with the anxiety of racial identity suppression.

摘要

在2015年夏季，波士顿美术博物馆举行了一系列活动，名为“和服星期三”，这鼓励参观者尝试克劳德·莫奈妻子在他丈夫1876年的油画《La Japonaise》中穿着的复制品，然后在这幅画。这种看似良性的赞赏行为引起了那些认为这些事件使异国帝国主义注视和东方定型观念永存的抗议者。本文通过考察白人女性作为日本人穿便装的历史背景化了这一争议，它如何构成一种自然化的粉饰形式，通过与吉尔伯特和沙利文的《天皇》的联系与消费的乐趣联系在一起。 （1885），以及在二十世纪初对亚裔美国妇女的行为方式充满了种族身份压抑的焦虑。