I used to be pretty desperate for dating tips when I first got to Iwate, and went around buying all the girl magazines I could to see if I could crack the code on Japanese boys. They were different! I thought. They were mysterious! They play by utterly different rules! And since I didn’t have any, you know, Japanese girl friends, I just had to rely on what the likes of Nonno, Anan, and Mina would tell me. And, well. Japanese boys are different than American boys, in many ways. But everyone is different. I’ve met far more shy boys that might not be brave enough to ask a girl out (*if she is foreign and scary) here, but I know a few shy boys at home too. And while I believed every word in those magazines for a time, now I just sort of chuckle when I read them (and I still do read them). According to Anan, my crush likes me +90%, but I just think that it would have worked out already if that was the case, wouldn’t it? So I’ve learned to take them with a grain of salt. The advice is the same as Cosmo anyway; be thinner, be prettier, be willing to do anything to please him, and don’t think about what you might want in the process. In some ways, here it’s worse.
(coming soon!: a post on feminism, and a post on japanese fashion…ie, i’m tired of writing about amanda, amanda, amanda for the moment)
Next time I read an interesting article I might just translate it. I’ve got half a mind of putting up the “how to avoid doing intimate act X” article buried in one of my Nonnos (how appropriate is that title?!) just for giggles. And see, that’s yet another reminder of how good I have it here, as a foreign woman in Japan. I can laugh at or be annoyed with one of these articles about how a “proper woman acts” but then I can put the magazine down and forget about it. There are rules about how I’m supposed to act here, but most of the small ones don’t apply, because people chalk it up to cultural differences (which a lot of the time it is). Boys are still attracted to me in spite of, or maybe because of the fact that I am loud and tend to take the spotlight to myself. There are Japanese girls who act like me, but I think they have a far more delicate balance act than I do - I’m loud and it gets excused because I’m American. A Japanese girl who is loud is made fun of behind her back (well, it could be that I am made fun of too! Who knows?).
I am also lucky in that I can speak good Japanese, am averagely attractive, and am white/normal weight/not poor, and I can’t deny that most of these things are things that I did not work for or earn but I benefit from their privileged status (and let me just say that it’s not like I think those things make me better, but I know they sometimes make it easier for me to participate in society than a person not so lucky). I am respected more than girls my age, and its easy (yet wrong) to chalk that up simply to the fact that I was brave enough to move to another country and speak another language. I see many foreign girls falling into the trap that I used to and still do, of making fun and belittling Japanese girls who act demure and cute and defer to men in every instance, yet that’s not necessarily the Japanese girl’s fault. She was taught to be this way and you can call it “getting into men’s good graces” and get jealous if a girl is better at it than you, but it doesn’t change the fact that it’s always the male gaze that we fall under and are judged under. I think it takes a long time to extract yourself from unfair thinking like this and separate what is real from society’s “rules.”
And that’s it! Again, I do want to write a “feminism” post because I have been thinking a lot about it, and studying it and reading up about it. Then again, I still don’t know very much and don’t want to open my mouth unless I have something good to say. It’s just such an interesting thing being a foreign girl in a country that isn’t always so kind to its own women. More thoughts later!
And like, the pictures in magazines are so cute too. So, there’s that.
May 27th, 2010 at 10:25 am
Very good points. People who belittle Japanese women for being more demure and ‘letting’ men treat them as less than equals are definitely ignoring the aspects of socialization involved. They’re also likely oblivious to the fact that girls in American society are also socialized to behave a certain way, to ‘be a lady’. Granted, the feminist movements and the fight for equal rights have given us more wiggle-room, but ultimately, we still generally encourage girls to behave in one fashion and boys in another. And those things gendered ‘female’ are still frequently devalued.
As one example, although there’s much much more freedom now than just decades ago, female sexuality is often limited to the context of pleasing men. It’s in the way we all talk as though men are hyper-sexual and women ‘just want to cuddle’. It’s in our movies, our magazines, and our porn.
Of course, my point is that we haven’t entirely freed ourselves from socialized male domination in the U.S., so taking a superior attitude toward Japanese women is neither productive nor fair. We should be allies, not enemies.
May 27th, 2010 at 9:17 pm
oh I totally agree! In America it’s still totally the norm to be told that men love sex and women hate it, and women who actually like having sex (and don’t feel any need to marry or trap the man they have sex with, so it’s really demeaning for people to say, “hey you are never going to get a boyfriend if you sleep with them right away” as if that was the only reason to sleep with someone) are called “sluts”, of course. be sexy, but don’t have too much sex. be pretty but don’t let anyone know about how much effort you put into it, because then you are high-maintenance. it’s all about how men think of us, and in some dude’s eyes, you will never be as “important” as a hot girl no matter how much you accomplish or how good a person you are. it’s stinky!
actually, i think it’s rather funny when guys over here say stuff like, “man, women have it so bad here in japan. in america/europe/other we treat women with respect.” it’s like, how oblivious are you? perhaps japan is “further behind” on the whole women’s rights issue, but that doesn’t mean america is Land of Equality for all. so yes, we should work together. one of the things i’ve really liked about feminism since i’ve actively tried to understand it is that it’s not about rising one group up to power with the dominant group - it’s about lifting the oppression that the dominant group puts on all lower groups. …ugh “oppression” lol i sound just like a big ol feminist now~
May 31st, 2010 at 12:14 am
“be sexy, but don’t have too much sex. be pretty but don’t let anyone know about how much effort you put into it, because then you are high-maintenance. it’s all about how men think of us, and in some dude’s eyes, you will never be as “important” as a hot girl no matter how much you accomplish or how good a person you are. it’s stinky!”
Yep, and there’s no way this kind of stuff isn’t going to play at least a little into how we view ourselves and how we act. We are sent mixed signals at every turn and told to compete with each other, only to have the behavior and attitudes socialized in many women turned back on them as ‘proof’ of their inferiority.
“it’s like, how oblivious are you?”
Definitely hear you there. Because of the freedoms and degree of balance society’s managed to gain, alongside the areas where enough improvement hasn’t happened, there’s a definite sense in America that people think things are ‘just about equal’, or even that we’ve gone too far and it’s the guys who are at a disadvantage. While there are definite social pressures and barriers on guys that I’d like to see knocked down, the idea that society’s gone beyond equality and men are now in the worse position is wrapped in male privelage.
“lol i sound just like a big ol feminist now~”
Haha, I’ve become pretty open about telling people straight-out that, yes, I am a feminist. I am not trying to conquer the world or ‘neuter’ men; I just realize that while we’ve come a long way, we aren’t quite ‘equal’ yet. I also realize that systemic sexism deals damage to all people, not just women. It saddens me that many people have to feel wary of calling themselves ‘feminist’ because it’s been tied into an idea of some sort of bitter man-hater. Sure, there -are- bitter man-haters out there, but there are an equal number of bitter women-haters, too. I mean, you know whoever first used the word ‘feminazi’ is a reactionary with a visceral fear of losing control.