Yuki Iozumi was fretting about how her shoulders would possibly look in a marriage costume.
“I really feel like I look too muscular,” stated the tiny-framed Ms. Iozumi, 20, relating how her associates had informed her that training karate had modified her physique. “I believe it’s not so female.”
Conventional femininity was her aim. 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 referred to 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 University of Tokyo and Keio University 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 always locations ladies in inflexible gender roles.
In Japan, the Miss Con finalists entice hundreds of followers on social media and affords of company sponsorship. Some go on to modeling gigs. Through the contest marketing campaign interval, lecturers are not often talked about. Public service will not be a prerequisite for coming into many 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 appears to be like than for his or her expertise or information.
Though there are contests for each ladies and men, it’s the ladies who draw probably the most consideration.
“The ‘Miss Cons’ are certainly one of our largest sources of purchasers,” stated Tasuku Ito, a expertise company supervisor on the Furutachi Challenge in Tokyo. “It’s a place the place numerous cute and fairly ladies are already assembled. We don’t even need to go searching for them.”
Male contestants aren’t usually scouted, he stated; males who seem on information and different tv packages “are most likely much more consultants of their fields.”
Magnificence is extra narrowly outlined in Japan than within the West. Girls 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, ads 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 most important campus within the middle of a classy Tokyo vogue district, dates again almost half a century and is without doubt one of the most well-known in Japan.
Gauzy, professionally produced modeling videos posted on-line showcase the rivals in conventional gender roles. In a single, three of the ladies act in a skit the place they focus on marriage targets, and one other video introduced on the pageant’s grand finale late final month confirmed the ladies baking cupcakes whereas the boys 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, have been proven consuming ice cream, hitting a badminton birdie within the park, searching for garments, enjoying video games in an arcade and consuming cheesecake with an unseen customer, all whereas peeking flirtatiously on the digicam.
Lately, some college students and school members at Japanese universities have begun questioning the premise 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 top of a newly shaped gender analysis middle. “The entire college tradition is contaminated by that.”
Aoyama Gakuin stated in a press release that as of final yr, Miss Con was now not a part of the college’s official fall pageant, and that the varsity 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 costume that she “would cry in the midst of the evening 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 University have 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 illustration. At Aoyama Gakuin and lots of different universities, the coed teams that arrange the pageants are now 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 throughout 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 compelled to drink 10 glasses of alcohol by a largely male panel of organizers who chosen the finalists.
“I used to be nonetheless a younger girl recent 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 ought to be abolished,” she stated.
At some universities, pupil organizers have sought to protect the pageants by shifting the main focus towards character and social messaging.
At Sophia College in Tokyo, organizers requested every candidate to pick a societal problem as a private theme and submit messages on social media. The competition organizers additionally unified the female and male pageants and invited entrants who recognized anyplace alongside the gender spectrum.
Final yr, when Sophia’s newly redesigned grand finale was staged on-line, one feminine contestant hid her face, making an attempt to convey that magnificence was now not the main focus 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 every time 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 vary 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 sporting lacy celebration attire on mortgage from a sponsor, and movies showcasing different company backers flashed on a big display screen. 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 companion.
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 remaining selections. “They’re all so cute,” he stated.
On the second day, the three remaining feminine finalists appeared in marriage ceremony robes with giant 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 marriage ceremony of stone-faced {couples}.
When Ms. Iozumi was pronounced Miss Aoyama, she regarded shocked.
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 contemplate coming into a Miss Con pageant.
“I believe they need to be so courageous, as a result of so many individuals will have a look at them,” she stated. “And you must be bodily very lovely.”
