"Rotten girl"

I've been trying to dig into the mystery of the Rotten girl or fujoshi phenomenon for a while. "What's that?" You might ask. It's a Japanese slang for "female yaoi fans". This Japanese blog has a very interesting article on a book called Manga is Desire. There are some eye-opening observations and thoughts.

The heroines in shojo manga are usually ordinary girls. But they are depicted as "pretty" anyway. Girls project themselves onto the character. So, "I'm ordinary but I'm pretty". On the other hand, the hero in shonen manga, is usually a super hero.

• Boys are raised to be "I'm better than ordinary" = single fixed identity.
• Girls are raised to be ordinary but happy= multi-layered identity.

Girls can read boy's manga but if a boy reads girl's manga, he will be thought as "strange". It's similar to girls can wear pants but boys don't wear skirts. (Multi-layered identity of girls.)

Male otakus look like otakus, while female otakus are good at camouflage, because they're used to using different identity at different situations.

Taboo leads to the growth of moe. (Yaoi --> homosexual, lolicon--> pedophilia.)

Parody:

• you need to know the original
• modern
• the artist gives meaning to the artwork
• maker oriented

Pastiche :

• still funny without knowing the original (= empty parody)
• postmodern
• the viewer gives meaning to the artwork
  
• consumer oriented

So... in nowadays society, the focus is on the iconized surface, the existence during this very minute. Any other background is not important. Just plain, dry and fun. This "lacking something" leads to the hunger for more...

Hmm... don't think I take good notes, and you can see why. Haha... that's it for now. That article is much longer, though. My brain shorted out trying to translate it into English.