Femmes Fatales | Mar 8 2021 |
Afro trend makes Watanabe wannabe cooler.
Consider this the flipside of our post on vintage afros a few days ago. While the afro was seen mainly on black actors and actresses, particularly in the blaxploitation movies we're always watching, many non-black actresses also flirted with the style. Celebs from Jane Fonda to Raquel Welch tried out 'fros, and we've even come across the occasional afro/perm on Japanese actresses. For example, here you see Yayoi Watanabe upping her hipness quotient. She appeared in such films as Ero shogun to nijuichi nin no aisho, aka Lustful Shogun and His 21 Mistresses, and was also the star of scores of memorable promo images, such as this one and this one. Probably, a Japanese actress sporting an afro wouldn't go over quite the same way today, but we like the look, and believe that respectfully experimenting with the styles of other cultures in non-costumey ways is fine. But that's just us. This shot is from around 1973.