“Cuteness” as an aesthetic has often been diminished due to its associations with femininity and childhood, and its connection to gender is inevitable (McIntyre, 2020). Its inherent affiliation with childhood comes from the aestheticization of powerlessness, leading to innate affective responses from spectators, especially through the imitation of baby-like features (Miesler, Herrmann, 2011). The relation to femininity is a direct response to its link to childhood, as both the maternal instinct for care-giving and the culture of powerlessness are stereotypically feminine traits (Dale et al., 2016; McIntyre, 2020). As Granot et al. (2014) argue, “cute” is to women and girls what “cool” is to men and boys. This parallele is potentially the motive behind the creation of Baby Yoda.
Originally from Japan, “Cuteness”, or Kawaii, have evolved in the mid-1980s to a cultural phenomenon following the development of the first youth subcultures that were not led by men (Dale et al., 2016). As Japanese teenage girls reclaimed their youth and childlike innocence to associate with each other, they also partook in a new kind of consumer culture through the acquiring of “cute goods” (Granot et al., 2014, p. 79). In the mid-1990s, as “cuteness” crossed the borders of Japan, the influence of the aesthetic increasingly affected marketers and businesses all around, as this new fruitful commerces encouraged consumerism and the manufacturing of cheap, yet emotionally attractive goods (Granot et al., 2014; Dale et al., 2016). At the time, the western world was overflowing with japanese products from fashion, mangas, animes, etc., and although the phenomenon has declined, the culture of cuteness is still a mainstream aesthetic, glamorizing “babyish, mindless behavior in women” (Granot et al., 2014, p. 82). However, while cuteness has often been seen as positive for women, and as a very lucrative activity for many businesses, feminists have recently shed light on the concerns that cuteness engages with a culture of exploitation and authority over women, as it encourages them to act submissive and weak rather than independent and powerful (Granot et al., 2014; McIntyre, 2020).
As Dale et al. (2016) argue, cuteness requires a relationship between the subject and the object, meaning something with cute features is only cute when another being feels the need to care for it. Marketers tend to design products with this idea in mind, and create sublimated and helpless looking toys in order to “trigger emotions in consumers - particularly small future consumers who appreciate the scale” (p. 225). Cuteness is, therefore, conventionally used to appeal to younger women, based on both their age and gender. Baby Yoda as a product has potentially been created to appeal to younger women to introduce them to the world of Star Wars through cuteness (Reed, 2023).