Yuki Izumi was worried about the shape of her shoulders in her wedding dress.
"I feel like I look very muscular," said the petite-framed lady. Izumi, 20, tells how her friends told her that practicing karate had transformed her body. "I think it's not very feminine."
Traditional femininity was her goal. Although mrs. Never married, a second-year community studies major, Iozumi was competing in a beauty pageant at Aoyama Gakuin University in Tokyo—part of a very common and unabashedly deep phenomenon in Japanese universities known as "Miss-con".
The competitions, called Miss Complete Pageants, are held at many universities across Japan, including universities with origins such as University of Tokyo And the Keio University Which is considered a training ground for elite political and business leaders.
While beauty pageants persist in the West, what is different in Japan is that they are sponsored by student groups in institutions that proclaim solemn principles of intellectual achievement and career preparation. Competitions also perpetuate a culture that often places women in rigid gender roles.
In Japan, Miss Con finalists attract thousands of followers on social media and corporate sponsorship offers. Some go to show gigs. During the contest campaign period, academics are rarely mentioned. Public service is not a prerequisite for entry into most contests.
The competitions are pipelines for TV anchors and "talents"—the women who appear on talk variety, comedy, and even news shows, where they are valued more for their looks than for their skills or knowledge.
Although there are competitions for both women and men, it is the women who draw the most attention.
“Miss Cons is one of the biggest sources of our clients,” said Tasuku Ito, director of talent agency Furutachi Project in Tokyo. “It's a place where a lot of beautiful, pretty women really congregate. We don't even have to look for them.”
He said young contestants don't usually explore; Men who appear on the news and other television programs "may be more experts in their fields."
Beauty is defined more narrowly in Japan than in the West. Women with feminine features, round eyes, and slender bodies—considered "kawaii" or cute—feature prominently in television dramas, pop sets, advertisements, and even anime.
In university competitions as well, fans tend to vote for winners who embody this concept of ideal female beauty.
The Aoyama Gakuin competition, with its main campus in the middle of Tokyo's chic fashion district, dates back nearly half a century and is one of the most prestigious competitions in Japan.
Hazy, professional production modeling videos The online publication shows the competitors in traditional gender roles. In one, three women work in a Comic play Where they discussed the goals of marriage, and another video shown at the finale of the Grand Competition late last month showed the women baking cakes while the men appeared in a weightlifting session.
Two years ago, Aoyama Gakuin video She showed the six finalists and asked the audience a question: "Who are you going on a date with?" The barely speaking women were shown eating ice cream, hitting a badminton bird in the park, shopping for clothes, playing games in the arcade and eating cheesecake with an unseen visitor, all while looking smugly into the camera.
In recent years, some students and faculty at Japanese universities have begun to question the foundations of such competitions. Critics attack them for imposing stereotypical standards of beauty, which they say contradict university values.
“I personally think that such a beauty contest among college students is simply outrageous, as it enhances the physical appearance and marketability of young women in a Japanese society where this kind of culture and value is already prevalent,” said Hye Bong Shin, Aoyama Gakuin Professor of Law and head of the Center for Gender Research. newly formed social. "The whole university culture is tainted by that."
In a statement, Aoyama Gakuen said that as of last year, Miss Kon was no longer part of the university's official fall festival, and that the school had established a gender research center to "replace stereotypical gender awareness".
The onerous beauty standards promoted by pageants can lead to unhealthy behaviour. in Video posted on YouTubea former Rikkyu University contestant said she dieted so much to fit into a wedding dress that she "would cry in the middle of the night because I was so hungry."
The competitions have also come under scrutiny after the male organizers of a competition in Keio University They were accused of sexually assaulting one of the contestants. At the University of Tokyo, the 2020 winner publicly accused the organizers of sexually harassing female contestants, by asking him during interviews how many sexual partners they had, for example. At Aoyama Gakuin and many other universities, student groups that organize competitions are no longer subject to formal sanction by their universities.
Organizers at the University of Tokyo — or TODAY, as the university is known — said they have now appointed "managers" for each woman in the competition. “The people inside the committee really warned us against ‘entrant harassment,’” said Ryoma Ogasawara, a student organizer for the competition. "But there isn't much we can do."
Asa Kamiya, 22, who was crowned Miss Today in 2020, said she witnessed another contestant break down in tears after being forced to drink 10 glasses of alcohol by the mostly-male panel of organizers who selected the finalists.
"I was still a young woman at university," said the lady. Kamia added that the organizers asked her about her sexuality. "And the thought of having all this support from all of these guys made me feel a little terrified."
After allegations of harassment arose, the Student Organizing Committee made a public announcement Apology.
after ms. Kamia said the competition "changed her life" because she later got modeling jobs and appeared on various TV shows. "I don't think competitions should be cancelled," she said.
At some universities, student organizers have sought to preserve competitions by shifting the focus towards personal and social messages.
At Sophia University in Tokyo, the organizers asked each candidate to choose a community challenge as their personal topic and to post messages on social media. Contest organizers have also unified the male and female contests and invite participants who identify as anywhere along the gender spectrum.
Last year, when the newly redesigned Sofia the Great finale aired online, one contestant hid her face, trying to convey that beauty was no longer the focus of the event. (didn't win).
This year's winner, Mihan Fujiwara, 19, is a welfare student who highlighted her visit to Cambodia, where she witnessed garbage problems in impoverished communities, and her volunteer work at a soup kitchen in Los Angeles over the summer.
But Mai Igawa, last year's runner-up, 21, who specializes in African studies, said that whenever she posts on Social media About her interest in Rwanda, she has received comments telling her "You're cute" or "You're beautiful".
"If the people watching the contest don't change, it's hard to change the perception of the contest," she said.
During the weekend in late October, the grand final contest of "Miss Aoyama" was held for two days in a dark hall on the ninth floor of a tower in Tokyo's Shibuya district.
Ms. Izumi and five other girls took part in the show on stage wearing lacy party dresses on loan from a sponsor, and videos featuring other corporate backers appeared on a large screen. Each contestant put on a short performance - decorating a cake, singing a self-composed hip-hop song, and in Ms. Izumi's case, karate show with a partner.
During the four-month campaign period, fans could vote online daily. In the end, they voted by hand as the winning finalists. Masayuki Yamanaka, 47, one of the pageant crowd favorites, wore a fedora and balanced a row of small stuffed animals on his lap. As he sifted through a contestant's files on a glossy show, he struggled to make his final choices. "They are all very nice," he said.
On day two, the three remaining female finalists appeared in wedding gowns with oversized hoop skirts and shimmering tiaras, each accompanied by one of the male finalists on the red-carpeted runway. Ms. Iozumi hid her shoulders under a lace bodice with a high neckline and long sleeves.
When the contestants returned to the lit stage, they called out a mass wedding of stone-faced couples.
When Mrs. Iozumi is pronounced Miss Aoyama, she looks dumbfounded.
Sitting in the back of the hall with a colleague from a university in Chiba, a prefecture that borders Tokyo, Nodoka Ogawa, 21, said she would never consider entering the Miss Universe pageant.
"I think they have to be very brave, because a lot of people are going to look at them," she said. "And you have to be physically beautiful."
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