What’s with Y’all and Marie Kondo?
Sparking Joy with the Tiger Mother
In a webinar to promote her new book, Marie Kondo made a quite Japanese joke, certainly in Japanese, and translated to English by an interpreter. She had kind of given up on achieving total tidiness, and her home is messy. But it’s the right way for her at this time.
Washington “Objectivity is White” Post picked it up, and we welcomed February 2023 with “Marie Kondo surrenders, hooray”. From the conservative/center-right side, I only noticed Bethany Mandel's piece for Mormon’s Deseret News. But from the liberal/center-left side, whoa. From two different pieces for The Guardian (one filed under “This Week in Patriarchy”) to various “Why Marie Kondo giving up is good for her”, to a strangely angry piece by Euronews.
Furthermore, I’m pretty disappointed at Sarah Polley, a teenage crush of mine who tweeted that Kondo had to officially apologize for making her fold her clothes into little envelopes. Of course, Polley removed that tweet and begrudgingly said that she was just joking. You’d think a Canadian socialist democrat is a killjoy but actually, she’s very humorous.
And then, the tweets and pieces saying, “Uh no, actually we’re not angry with Kondo.”. All seems cerebral and considerate until you ponder that all those comments are made by white women (the angry Euronews piece is led by a white man). In the time of dismantling Whiteness and don’t be a Karen.
What confounds me with all this reaction is why white people on Twitter and mainstream websites are so invested in her. She’s not even an Asian-American who communicates in English, and she never involves herself in Twitter conversations on Western politics. Why does she touch the coastal elites’ nerves more than other famous Asians like BTS or Michelle Yeoh?
The Rise and Fall of Marie Kondo
The love for Kondo, like for many other girlbosses, peaked in the first half of 2019 when Netflix launched her show Tidying Up with Marie Kondo. In each episode, she visits an American family with her interpreter Marie Iida, listens to their storage management problems, and solves them through her method. Typical home rescue series. But Netflix gave chance to a host who speaks mainly in Japanese, and picked diverse families to be featured in the eight episodes, including some migrants.
So, it all started because Kondo had become Netflix famous. Twitter documented all the moments from Tidying Up. The boos for the episode 1 Friend family (who is a white middle-class family, hence accused of being Trump voters). The lesbian fantasies, because all female screen stars in recent times have to be secretly lesbians. The praises for the other families for being genuine and relatable. The gifs and memes.
And then, the backlash. Tweets saying, “Marie doesn’t spark joy, so I’ll throw her away” and “Marie fits into this luggage”. And the infamous “This woman is a monster” tweet made by Jennifer Wright, the political editor-at-large of Harper’s Bazaar. Or Democratic Socialist figure Barbara Ehrenreich complaining that Kondo doesn’t speak English. Being a good democrat socialist, Ehrenreich also complained that people couldn’t take a joke.
In reaction, we got women of color writing articles saying that criticism against Marie Kondo was racist. Asian American women criticized the commentators for othering Kondo, making her another eastern guru meddling with white lives. And so, I thought the liberal white women would learn and do better.
Of course not. Came the pandemic, and Kondo’s sequel plan went bust. Supposedly Netflix aimed to enlarge the scope from a house into a town, and of course, this was impossible during the pandemic. Kondo herself got pregnant and got canceled.
KonMari was a product of the 2010s, part of the cozy living trend riding on brands of Nordic and Japanese ethics. Nordic had hygge and lagom, Japan had ikigai and Kondo’s kurashi. Her spark joy brand (translation of tokimeku) began in Japan in 2011 and reached the West in 2014. Her name was limited to mothers’ Facebook groups and blogs before Netflix made her Twitter famous.
Naturally, her online store sold expensive accessories, and Twitter snarks came out again. “Making us throw out our stuff so you can sell your $75 brush. Well played, Marie.”. From the same white women who tweeted about white privilege and antiracism. Kondo’s second Netflix series, Sparking Joy with Marie Kondo, is just 3 episodes long and deliberately focuses on African American families as well as the Kondos. That “helping towns across America” idea was taken over by HGTV’s Home Town Kickstart…Presented by PEOPLE. Sure, you can’t put Netflix and People in the same sentence.
And then this pile on Marie support for the new, chiller, less perfect(ionist) Marie in 2023.
The New White Flight
When Jennifer Wright didn’t have to think twice about calling Kondo a monster (complete with a graphic), I knew what was up. Kondo had become a new Amy Chua. Sure, different women. Kondo didn’t write about forcing holding her daughter’s dollhouse and bladder hostage. Kondo didn’t support Brett Kavanaugh. Kondo never commented anything about Japanese politics, let alone American politics.
But by becoming Netflix famous, she had become Twitter famous. And being Twitter famous is being part of the liberal political ecosystem. She’s not a Twitterati, but apparently, her presence is unsettling enough for the chattering class, the always online, the Ivy League graduates.
Asian women who are not famous have experienced this shunning earlier. The white flight from Cupertino, the home of Apple, had been reported back in 2005 (Cupertino is now 63% Asian). Some Asian American residents even blamed migrant families for being “too competitive”.
In 2016, The Pacific Standard Magazine featured a lament of a South Asian woman, Anjali Enjeti, who got her Americana dream in Georgia, until her white neighbors moved out.
What hurt her was their politics. They talked about Black Lives Matter, but they preferred to move out of their hard-won houses than live with a neighbor of color. Enjeti’s fault? Having Asian children who’d do well in school, thus put pressure on white teens who were aiming for Harvard and then the New York Times.
Finally, Marie Kondo herself had faced hostility from the National Association of Professional Organizers back in 2016, for no other reason than being Japanese.
It’s too early to tell, but I’m not sure if Marie Kondo’s children are aiming for NYT internships. And again, Kondo doesn’t raid Sarah Polley’s house to see if she’s folded her sweaters into upright soft rectangles. I always thought that people who pay for KonMari certificates are apolitical Facebook moms, not “Protect trans kids” Twitter blue checks.
Then again, Louise Perry said that everyone fights like a girl on Twitter since Twitter is essentially a girls’ school (and The Guardian, The Washington Post, and such). All the talk about the importance of antiracism and diversity is off once the Asian woman appears. She’s not necessarily bossy, intimidating, or combative. But by doing her job well, she seems to be a miss perfectly unburdened by political baggage, and maybe that is what makes her unlikeable.