Yuki Iozumi was fretting about how her shoulders would possibly look in a marriage gown.
“I really feel like I look too muscular,” stated the tiny-framed Ms. Iozumi, 20, relating how her pals had advised her that working towards karate had modified her physique. “I believe it’s not so female.”
Conventional femininity was her objective. Though Ms. Iozumi, a second-year group research main, wasn’t getting married, she was competing in a magnificence pageant at Aoyama Gakuin College in Tokyo — a part of a wildly standard, and unabashedly skin-deep, phenomenon at Japanese universities generally known as “Miss Con.”
The pageants, known as Miss Contest in full, are staged at quite a few campuses throughout Japan, together with at pedigreed universities just like the College of Tokyo and Keio College which can be thought of coaching grounds for elite political and enterprise leaders.
Whereas magnificence pageants persist within the West, what’s totally different in Japan is that they’re sponsored by pupil teams at establishments that proclaim august ideas of mental achievement and preparation for skilled life. The contests additionally perpetuate a tradition that usually locations ladies in inflexible gender roles.
In Japan, the Miss Con finalists appeal to 1000’s of followers on social media and affords of company sponsorship. Some go on to modeling gigs. Throughout the contest marketing campaign interval, lecturers are not often talked about. Public service isn’t a prerequisite for coming into a lot of the contests.
The pageants are thought to be pipelines for tv announcers and “skills” — ladies who seem on selection, comedy and even information speak exhibits, the place they’re valued extra for his or her seems than for his or her expertise or data.
Though there are contests for each ladies and men, it’s the ladies who draw probably the most consideration.
“The ‘Miss Cons’ are one in all our greatest sources of purchasers,” stated Tasuku Ito, a expertise company supervisor on the Furutachi Undertaking in Tokyo. “It’s a place the place numerous cute and fairly ladies are already assembled. We don’t even should go in search of them.”
Male contestants should not sometimes scouted, he stated; males who seem on information and different tv applications “are most likely much more specialists of their fields.”
Magnificence is extra narrowly outlined in Japan than within the West. Ladies with girlish options, spherical eyes and rail-thin our bodies — those that are thought of “kawaii,” or cute — function prominently in tv dramas, pop teams, commercials and even anime.
Within the college contests, too, followers are inclined to vote for winners who embody this conception of idealized feminine magnificence.
The competitors at Aoyama Gakuin, with its primary campus within the middle of an elegant Tokyo vogue district, dates again almost half a century and is likely one of the most well-known in Japan.
Gauzy, professionally produced modeling movies posted on-line showcase the opponents in conventional gender roles. In a single, three of the ladies act in a skit the place they focus on marriage objectives, and one other video offered on the pageant’s grand finale late final month confirmed the ladies baking cupcakes whereas the lads appeared in a weight lifting session.
Two years in the past, an Aoyama Gakuin video featured the six feminine finalists and posed viewers the query: “Who would you go on a date with?” The ladies, who barely spoke, had been proven consuming ice cream, hitting a badminton birdie within the park, searching for garments, taking part in video games in an arcade and consuming cheesecake with an unseen customer, all whereas peeking flirtatiously on the digital camera.
In recent times, some college students and college members at Japanese universities have begun questioning the idea of such pageants. Critics assail them for imposing stereotypical magnificence requirements, and say they’re inconsistent with the values of a college.
“I personally assume that this magnificence contest amongst college college students is solely outrageous, as a result of it promotes bodily look and the marketability of younger ladies in a Japanese society the place that sort of tradition and worth is already so prevalent,” stated Hae-bong Shin, a regulation professor at Aoyama Gakuin and the pinnacle of a newly shaped gender analysis middle. “The entire college tradition is contaminated by that.”
Aoyama Gakuin stated in an announcement that as of final yr, Miss Con was not a part of the college’s official fall pageant, and that the college had established the gender analysis middle to “change stereotypical gender consciousness.”
The onerous magnificence requirements promoted by the pageants can result in unhealthy conduct. In a video posted on YouTube, a former contestant at Rikkyo College stated she had dieted a lot to suit into a marriage gown that she “would cry in the midst of the night time as a result of I used to be too hungry.”
The contests have additionally come below scrutiny after male organizers of a pageant at Keio College had been accused of sexually assaulting one of many contestants. On the College of Tokyo, the 2020 winner publicly accused organizers of sexually harassing contestants, by asking throughout interviews what number of sexual companions that they had been with, as an example. At Aoyama Gakuin and plenty of different universities, the coed teams that manage the pageants are not formally sanctioned by their universities.
Organizers on the College of Tokyo — or Todai, because the college is thought — stated they now assigned feminine “managers” to every girl within the contest. “We’ve got actually warned folks inside the committee to not” harass the entrants, stated Ryoma Ogasawara, a pupil organizer of the pageant. “However there’s not a lot else we will do.”
Asa Kamiya, 22, who in 2020 was topped Miss Todai, stated she watched one other contestant break down in tears after being pressured to drink 10 glasses of alcohol by a principally male panel of organizers who chosen the finalists.
“I used to be nonetheless a younger girl contemporary into college,” stated Ms. Kamiya, who added that the organizers had additionally requested about her intercourse life. “And the considered having to get all this assist from all these males made me really feel a bit creepy.”
After the harassment allegations emerged, the coed organizing committee issued a public apology.
But Ms. Kamiya stated the competition had “modified her life” as a result of she later secured modeling jobs and appeared on tv selection exhibits. “I don’t assume the contests needs to be abolished,” she stated.
At some universities, pupil organizers have sought to protect the pageants by shifting the main target towards character and social messaging.
At Sophia College in Tokyo, organizers requested every candidate to pick out a societal problem as a private theme and put up messages on social media. The competition organizers additionally unified the female and male pageants and invited entrants who recognized wherever alongside the gender spectrum.
Final yr, when Sophia’s newly redesigned grand finale was staged on-line, one feminine contestant hid her face, attempting to convey that magnificence was not the main target of the occasion. (She didn’t win).
This yr’s winner, Mihane Fujiwara, 19, is a social-welfare main who highlighted her go to to Cambodia, the place she witnessed issues with trash in poor communities, and her work volunteering at a Los Angeles soup kitchen over the summer time.
However the runner-up final yr, Mai Egawa, 21, who’s majoring in African research, stated that at any time when she posted on social media about her curiosity in Rwanda, she obtained feedback telling her “you’re cute” or “you’re lovely.”
“If the people who find themselves watching the competition don’t change,” she stated, “then it’s tough to alter the notion of the competition.”
Over a weekend in late October, the two-day grand finale of the “Miss Mister Aoyama Contest” was held in a darkish auditorium on the ninth flooring of a tower within the Shibuya district of Tokyo.
Ms. Iozumi and 5 different feminine finalists paraded throughout the stage carrying lacy celebration attire on mortgage from a sponsor, and movies showcasing different company backers flashed on a big display. Every contestant gave a brief efficiency — adorning a cake, singing a self-composed hip-hop tune and, in Ms. Iozumi’s case, demonstrating a karate kata with a accomplice.
All through a four-month marketing campaign interval, followers might vote every day on-line. On the finale, they voted manually to winnow the finalists. Masayuki Yamanaka, 47, a serial pageant goer within the viewers, wore a fedora and balanced a row of small stuffed animals in his lap. As he scrutinized the contestant profiles in a shiny program, he struggled to make his last decisions. “They’re all so cute,” he stated.
On the second day, the three remaining feminine finalists appeared in wedding ceremony robes with massive hoop skirts and glittering tiaras, every accompanied by a male finalist on a red-carpeted runway. Ms. Iozumi hid her shoulders below a bodice with a excessive lace neck and lengthy sleeves.
Because the contestants returned to the floodlit stage, they evoked a mass wedding ceremony of stone-faced {couples}.
When Ms. Iozumi was pronounced Miss Aoyama, she regarded surprised.
Sitting in the back of the auditorium with a classmate from a college in Chiba, a prefecture bordering Tokyo, Nodoka Ogawa, 21, stated she would by no means think about coming into a Miss Con pageant.
“I believe they should be so courageous, as a result of so many individuals will take a look at them,” she stated. “And you must be bodily very lovely.”
Supply: NY Times
