Americanization of Asian Culture

With social media heavily influencing teens, trends are constantly changing and growing in popularity. Ever since the 2010s, Asian culture has become incredibly popular with today’s teens. From K-pop to anime, fashion and makeup styles, right down to the beauty standards, America is exploding with Asian influence.

Many people trace this trend back to the start of the famous K-pop group BTS. Fans of the group helped spread the popularity of the group, and have been growing since then. With the release of their biggest songs “Dynamite” and “Butter”, America was swept off its feet. In the summer of 2021 BTS had more than 108.3 million views within 24 hours for their music video “Butter”, setting a record for most views within 24 hours of release. The previous record was held by another K-pop group, Blackpink’s song “How You Like That”, with 83 million views within 24 hours. Sophomore Lief Foussat adds, “It opens people up to different cultures, but a lot of K-pop groups are creating songs to cater to Americans.” BTS and Blackpink have begun incorporating English into their songs to market to Americans as of 2020.

Asian fashion trends have been dramatically increasing in popularity. Plaid skirts, thigh-high socks, makeup products, and cosplay of anime characters, which means dressing up as the characters and acting like them. Many people cosplay on social media, but plenty of controversies come from cosplayers challenging the gender or race of the characters. Most characters in anime are Asian, catering more towards Asian viewers, but many of the people cosplaying these characters are not Asian. In most cases, Caucasians are not harassed for cosplaying a character that is Asian, but many people of color who are not Asian get many hateful comments. A similar situation is surrounding the gender of characters, with women getting badgered about cosplaying male characters.

Of course, cosplay would not have become popular if it was not for anime. The anime industry has been around since before the ’90s, and its popularity skyrocketed during COVID. With extra time to spare, many teens turned to anime. With so many famous titles to choose from, the anime community has grown exponentially. Junior Angelia Borski comments, “I personally love anime and seeing more people enjoy it around the world!” The anime market size was an estimated 23.56 billion dollar industry in 2020.