CHRISTMAS CAKE CARD
Size varied // ink jet on paper // 2008

The Christmas Cake Card was my first project from Tokyo on the Fulbright grant. A multi-part package sent to friends and family back in the US, it captures the transition from my previous research on kawaii / cute-culture, to my new focus on female standards of beauty and social pressures in Japan. For inspiration I began with cultural differences that stood out to me, such as the still-prevalent pressure for women to marry young, and the general emphasis on surface presentation and packaging. As a fun way to approach these topics, I used the recent tradition of couples eating "Christmas Cake" on the holiday as my platform. (Please read the text to the right for further explanation).

This was a springboard for other projects about the importance of "surface" in Japanese culture, which gave me new understanding of the different ways Japanese and Westerners experience and appropriate visual language.