Yuki Iozumi was fretting about how her shoulders may look in a marriage costume.
“I really feel like I look too muscular,” mentioned the tiny-framed Ms. Iozumi, 20, relating how her buddies had instructed her that training karate had modified her physique. “I believe it’s not so female.”
Conventional femininity was her purpose. Though Ms. Iozumi, a second-year neighborhood research main, wasn’t getting married, she was competing in a magnificence pageant at Aoyama Gakuin College in Tokyo — a part of a wildly in style, and unabashedly skin-deep, phenomenon at Japanese universities referred to as “Miss Con.”
The pageants, referred to 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 are thought-about coaching grounds for elite political and enterprise leaders.
Whereas magnificence pageants persist within the West, what’s completely different in Japan is that they’re sponsored by scholar teams at establishments that proclaim august rules of mental achievement and preparation for skilled life. The contests additionally perpetuate a tradition that usually locations girls in inflexible gender roles.
In Japan, the Miss Con finalists entice hundreds of followers on social media and presents of company sponsorship. Some go on to modeling gigs. Through the contest marketing campaign interval, teachers are not often talked about. Public service is just not a prerequisite for getting into a lot of the contests.
The pageants are thought to be pipelines for tv announcers and “abilities” — girls who seem on selection, comedy and even information speak exhibits, the place they’re valued extra for his or her seems to be than for his or her expertise or information.
Though there are contests for each ladies and men, it’s the girls who draw probably the most consideration.
“The ‘Miss Cons’ are one among our greatest sources of shoppers,” mentioned Tasuku Ito, a expertise company supervisor on the Furutachi Challenge in Tokyo. “It’s a place the place lots of cute and fairly girls are already assembled. We don’t even need to go in search of them.”
Male contestants will not be sometimes scouted, he mentioned; males who seem on information and different tv packages “are most likely much more specialists 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-about “kawaii,” or cute — characteristic 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 major campus within the middle of an elegant Tokyo trend 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 talk about 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, 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.
In recent times, some college students and college 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 just outrageous, as a result of it promotes bodily look and the marketability of younger girls in a Japanese society the place that sort of tradition and worth is already so prevalent,” mentioned Hae-bong Shin, a regulation professor at Aoyama Gakuin and the pinnacle of a newly fashioned gender analysis middle. “The entire college tradition is contaminated by that.”
Aoyama Gakuin mentioned in an announcement that as of final 12 months, Miss Con was not a part of the college’s official fall pageant, and that the varsity had established the gender analysis middle to “substitute 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 mentioned she had dieted a lot to suit into a marriage costume that she “would cry in the course 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 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 example. At Aoyama Gakuin and lots 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 understood — mentioned they now assigned feminine “managers” to every girl within the contest. “We’ve actually warned folks throughout the committee to not” harass the entrants, mentioned Ryoma Ogasawara, a scholar organizer of the pageant. “However there’s not a lot else we will do.”
Asa Kamiya, 22, who in 2020 was topped Miss Todai, mentioned 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,” mentioned 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 mentioned 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 mentioned.
At some universities, scholar 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 a societal problem as a private theme and publish 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 12 months, 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 not the main target of the occasion. (She didn’t win).
This 12 months’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 12 months, Mai Egawa, 21, who’s majoring in African research, mentioned 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 mentioned, “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 get together clothes 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 music and, in Ms. Iozumi’s case, demonstrating a karate kata with a companion.
All through a four-month marketing campaign interval, followers may 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 ultimate selections. “They’re all so cute,” he mentioned.
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 appeared surprised.
Sitting behind the auditorium with a classmate from a college in Chiba, a prefecture bordering Tokyo, Nodoka Ogawa, 21, mentioned she would by no means contemplate getting into a Miss Con pageant.
“I believe they need to be so courageous, as a result of so many individuals will take a look at them,” she mentioned. “And you need to be bodily very lovely.”