Cute Studies: An Emerging Field

Lecture poster

A presentation delivered at Central Washington University, October 5, 2015.

Cute Studies: An Emerging Field

 An American slang word dating to the mid-nineteenth century, “cute” was originally associated with children, women, the domestic sphere, and a particular form of “feminine spectacle” (Merish 192). However, the rapid rise of cute culture(s) in the 21st century has seen a worldwide explosion of cute commodities, characters, foods, fashions, and fandoms that considerably expand the term’s prior alignments. Though cuteness is spreading more and more widely in popular culture, it is just beginning to become the object of serious academic inquiry (Ngai). Basic questions have yet to be fully explored. For example: is cuteness a function of subjective judgment; a quality inherent in the objects experienced as cute; or a complex interplay between the two? What to make of the power differential inherent in the relationship between an ostensibly powerless cute object and the subject who, in perceiving it as such, is reduced to cooing and “awwing”? Last but not least, what does the cuteness response reveal about human relationships: to objects, to each other, and to our companion species? 

In this lecture, I provide a brief overview of the scientific research on cute affect to show how it has influenced scholarship on the aesthetics of cute, and what it offers to the future of this scholarship. I then compare the English “cute” and the Japanese “kawaii”to demonstrate the connotations unique to each, and to facilitate an examination of the place of aggression and violence in cute aesthetics and affect. Finally, I analyze the cuteness of domesticated animals in order to add important new attributes to the category of “cute,” and suggest some possibilities for further research into the human cuteness response that is triggered so readily by animate and inanimate objects alike.