Women in Japan

This is a very interesting subject that I've been thinking about for some time...

The general style of younger girls is basically being done up from head to toe...teeny tiny skirts, high heels, revealing tops and colorful tights, pantyhose or thigh highs. Their makeup is EXTREMELY done up...fake eyelashes, thick black eyeliner, dark eyeshadow, bright pink blush...I mean, if a girl in the US dressed up like that, she would be called all sorts of names. That's definitely not the case here. Also interesting to me was that many of the clothing models on the posters were european looking girls and that this young generation of Japanese girls is trying to make themselves look more western by lightening their hair and even putting on blond wigs.

Walking around the mall in Shibuya, I was amazed. I literally couldn't stop staring. The girls were like paintings that you can't take your eyes off of. When I thought about it a little more, I realized that that was exactly what they are. By trying to be so unique, they are basically making themselves all seem the same...an interesting thing to admire. I'm not sure what it is in their psyche that makes them spend what must be two hours every morning and countless amounts of money on clothing. Some ideas of mine are that it's a way for them to pretend to be someone else, or perhaps that they are tired of the homogeneity of Japan, or maybe even that their sisters are doing it.

Whatever the reasons may be, Japanese women still face many gender related issues. It is still very much a male dominated society and women's roles seem to mostly be in the service industry. For a culture so advanced, women's rights still have a very long way to go. The first question that comes to my mind is why the same type of women's liberation movement that we have seen in the US hasn't happened here, but that might not be the correct question. Maybe we should ask - are Japanese women happier this way? It's obviously only a subset of women that are choosing to dress/act like this, but I wonder if they have just found an un-pc solution to a difficult question of women's roles in society.


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