Yuki Iozumi was fretting about how her shoulders may look in a marriage gown.
“I really feel like I look too muscular,” mentioned the tiny-framed Ms. Iozumi, 20, relating how her pals had informed her that practising karate had modified her physique. “I believe it’s not so female.”
Conventional femininity was her aim. 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 standard, 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 University which can be thought of 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 pupil teams at establishments that proclaim august ideas 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 gives of company sponsorship. Some go on to modeling gigs. Throughout the contest marketing campaign interval, teachers are not often talked about. Public service will not be a prerequisite for getting into many of the contests.
The pageants are thought to be pipelines for tv announcers and “abilities” — girls who seem on selection, comedy and even information discuss reveals, the place they’re valued extra for his or her seems 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 considered one of our largest sources of purchasers,” mentioned Tasuku Ito, a expertise company supervisor on the Furutachi Challenge in Tokyo. “It’s a place the place numerous cute and fairly girls are already assembled. We don’t even need to go searching for them.”
Male contestants should not usually scouted, he mentioned; males who seem on information and different tv applications “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 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 an elegant Tokyo style district, dates again practically 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 opponents in conventional gender roles. In a single, three of the ladies act in a skit the place they talk about 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, looking 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 form of tradition and worth is already so prevalent,” mentioned Hae-bong Shin, a legislation professor at Aoyama Gakuin and the top 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 yr, Miss Con was now not a part of the college’s official fall pageant, and that the college had established the gender analysis middle to “exchange stereotypical gender consciousness.”
The onerous magnificence requirements promoted by the pageants can result in unhealthy habits. In a video posted on YouTube, a former contestant at Rikkyo College mentioned she had dieted a lot to suit into a marriage gown that she “would cry in the course of the evening as a result of I used to be too hungry.”
The contests have additionally come underneath 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 they’d been with, as an illustration. At Aoyama Gakuin and lots of different universities, the coed teams that manage the pageants are now 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 now have actually warned folks inside the committee to not” harass the entrants, mentioned Ryoma Ogasawara, a pupil organizer of the pageant. “However there’s not a lot else we are able to 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 principally male panel of organizers who chosen the finalists.
“I used to be nonetheless a younger girl contemporary 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 help 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 reveals. “I don’t assume the contests needs to be abolished,” she mentioned.
At some universities, pupil 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 put up messages on social media. The competition organizers additionally unified the female and male pageants and invited entrants who recognized wherever 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 target 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 season.
However the runner-up final yr, Mai Egawa, 21, who’s majoring in African research, mentioned that at any time when 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 troublesome 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 ground 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 track and, in Ms. Iozumi’s case, demonstrating a karate kata with a accomplice.
All through a four-month marketing campaign interval, followers might vote day by 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 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 underneath 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 in the back of the auditorium with a classmate from a college in Chiba, a prefecture bordering Tokyo, Nodoka Ogawa, 21, mentioned she would by no means take into account 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.”