#utenthy

we’ll always have yesterday

Spoilers for Revolutionary Girl Utena

Women are a pivotal element in my work. In my pictures they act as representatives of all genders….I process the human themes with a female cast.

Utena crossdresses to capture a boy’s [sense of adventure] while remaining a girl. To make a stand against the world.

A commodified form of femininity is sweeping pop culture online: from tradwife influencers getting millions on views on platforms like TikTok, to the chorus of No Doubt’s “Just a Girl” being used as a meme sound for young women to joke about how hopeless they are. Whether all of these posts are ironic or not, they reinforce a broader social trope about being “just” girls: pretty, pure-hearted, in need of rescue. Won’t somebody please care for girls who are just girls? Sentiments of this manner are not new, but they popped up in stronger frequency sometime during the pandemic and show no signs of stopping. Unthreatening femininity is en vogue, feminism old-fashioned and unnecessary. Images of womanhood beyond it are fringe and unattractive, if not outright non-existent. 

It’s a deeply frustrating ecosystem to have to scroll through, particularly as a queer woman of color. It’s all the sweeter, then, to encounter modes of womanhood that are perpendicular to such notions. Sailor Moon S (1994-1995) and Revolutionary Girl Utena (1997) both feature butch characters very prominently: Tenoh Haruka, aka Sailor Uranus from the former, and Tenjou Utena, the titular protagonist of the latter. In adapting both these characters for TV, Ikuhara Kunihiko makes compelling arguments: that girlhood can look like many different things, that the girl who embraces masculinity finds herself with more freedom, and that it’s worth our while to deconstruct and question the archetypes and assumptions of girlhood that try to pin these characters down.

someday, someday, embrace my wounds that won’t heal and touch me softly