I went to an Anime Convention this weekend. For an aesthetic that is so hyper-sexualized, there were quite a few people there that made me take a good, long look and wonder "Boy? Or girl?"
All the energy these people expend, to submerge their personal identity, and present another identity, which usually have unique personality traits, grafted onto an already formed persona--all that energy seems focused on the window dressing, the appearance, with no thought or planning to what happens after. The goal is to look a certain way, not to look a certain way, to attract a certain type of person. I think these anime folks just wanted to get dressed up and look at each other, and even that can only take place in a certain kind of short-lived world.
