Japan’s miss contests reflect society’s high demands on women

Nation is not alone in expecting superwomen with both brains and beauty

Why do women still join beauty contests?

This is an important question as the miss contest pageants held at many Japanese universities are drawing attention from international media.

Popularized in the late 1970s, miss contests have so far survived feminist bashing as well as bouts of #MeToo-esque scandals. They continue to draw a steady following and are organized by student groups at some of Japan’s most prestigious universities.

A recent feature article in The New York Times posited that the pageants, known as “miss cons”, objectify young women. The article concluded that their unabashed lookism reflects a sexist cultural emphasis on “beauty over brains.”

Writing in Nikkei Asia recently, Tokyo resident Stephen Givens framed mis cons as “complex personality contests”, which “push young Japanese, often brought up to be shy and reticent, to present themselves in bold and unaccustomed ways.”

Both analyses, however, tread only lightly on the basic question of why a young woman would go through a weekslong competition centered on appearance-focused public scrutiny.

Classic beauty pageants may have given aspiring women from underprivileged backgrounds a golden ticket to climb the social ladder. Not so with the miss cons held at top schools, including the University of Tokyo and Sophia University. Although some of these universities have adapted the miss cons to respond to criticism of lookism, such as by creating a new contest that aims to focus less on looks, the young ambitious students who participate here are out to prove that they have both brains and beauty.

Japan, along with South Korea and China, is infamous for its competitive education system, which emphasizes finding the right answer rather than asking creative questions.

Students at top universities are survivors of this system who have conformed well to the expectations set by their elders. Some students with better looks apply for miss cons as an extension of conformity, responding to a dog whistle from society.

German philosopher Rebekka Reinhard conceptually divides the world into a “hard sphere” of capitalism and business ruled by men and a “soft sphere” of home, family and personal lanes governed by women in her recently published book that carries the translated title, The Headquarters of Responsibilities: 20 Survival Strategies for Women Between Wanting, Should and Must.

In modern Western societies, including Japan, gender-based borders are blurred. Women now have to prove their worth in both spheres with a combination of intelligence and the traditionally praised feminine qualities of being pretty, sweet, caring, loving and seductive. “The oscillation between the two spheres,” Reinhard writes, “is difficult and stressful.”

Men, on the other hand, have been conspicuously slow to claim the soft sphere. Consider Iku-men, a recent addition to the Japanese vocabulary, which refers to an exotic species of father, “men who tend to childcare.”

There is no equivalent term for women -- they are simply called mothers.

Unsurprisingly, to be a superwoman who can achieve the holy grail of dual-sphere happiness is a tall ask, in Reinhard’s words, “an illusory promise.”

If a woman opts out of this model due to excess stress, she can either aim to be successful in the hard sphere like her male counterparts and remain single, exempt from the wifely expectations of society, or she can forget the hard sphere entirely. But being a full-time Japanese housewife can mean forfeiting lifelong earnings of around 200 million yen, according to The Japan Institute for Labour Policy and Training.

The first scenario contributes to the high rate of women who postpone or give up on marriage. As of 2020, according to government statistics, 23.6% of Japanese women between 35 and 39 had never been married, compared to just 10% in 1995.

The average number of children a Japanese woman has over her lifetime continues to plummet, sliding from 1.42 to 1.33 over the same period.

Choosing to stay home, however, is increasingly risky when the financial prospects of husbands are more and more precarious.

Either path is suboptimal for society.

So, what can we do to chip away at the unreasonably high expectations to which society holds women accountable? Reinhard advocates “strategic non-conformism”; just because we can win in miss cons, be a CEO and be a perfect mother does not mean that we must.

I would add two more recommendations.

First, we must raise awareness about gender-based asymmetry. For example, let us catch ourselves before asking only working mothers if they want to leave early to pick up the kids. Hypothesizing gender reversal is a good exercise to question our bias.

Second, optics matter. Demonstrating the wide range of women markedly successful in either sphere of activity will help to break the notion that a woman must be perfect across the two spheres.

Take the hard sphere. As Givens rightly points out, Japan has its share of vibrant women active in diverse professional fields. Yet there is a gross underrepresentation in public of women who fall outside the narrow category of “young and pretty,” the unofficial credo of miss cons. Men, on the other hand, are spared from such underrepresentation.

In promotional materials for business panels, my eyes automatically search for women.?Higher consciousness around gender balance leaves few panels as “manels” these days. But too often, women appear only as moderators, and nearly all of these are freelance anchorwomen. While there is nothing wrong with the profession, they represent but a fraction of qualified women.

Rather than reflect the strong sexist culture of Japan, which begins at a young age, I would argue that the conforming students who join miss cons diligently self-optimize for what society expects: superwomen with both brains and beauty. But this expectation is universal.

This article was originally published by Nikkei Asia on January 30th, 2023.