By Holly L. Derr. But Katy Perry is certainly not the first Westerner to misrepresent the geisha. The history of the Japanese geisha is long and complicated: The term has not always meant the same thing, and even today, competing definitions exist. Due to the popularity of "geesha girls" among GIs during World War II, most Westerners conflate geishas with prostitutes, when in reality the only consistent aspect of the…
SOURCE: HowlRound at 12:46PM on December 6, 2013