Sometimes the outlet does a really great job of portraying a subculture, such as this Wall Street Journal article and video on himegyaru and this fantastic New York Times piece on the lolita fashion circle in New York.
But sometimes, coverage of a subculture ranges from anywhere between sloppy and poorly reported to inaccurate and exoticizing.
Full disclosure: when I spent time in Japan in 2008, my interest in lolita fashion helped me make friends in Nagoya. At the school I attended, Japanese students had classes on the Japanese school schedule, where foreign students went to school for the typical September-May calendar common in America. For this reason, during the spring semester, it was months before we were on campus with any Japanese students.
I didn't really click with many of the other foreign kids, so my participation in the lolita subculture was a very vital way for me to make both Japanese and English-speaking friends. I estimate that I dressed in lolita fashion about twice a week.
Being a lolita myself and an admirer of other Japanese fashions such as gyaru and mori girl, it rubs me the wrong way when I see articles on youth subcultures that just aren't what they could be. But as a journalist, I can surely understand how some of these mistakes are made.
I'm sure covering fashion isn't the biggest priority for foreign correspondents. I can see how it could be seen as an easy article to pay the bills while working on something bigger and more important, such as an article about politics or social issues.
In my opinion, though, stories about pop culture are important, especially when thinking about how the media frames stories about Japan. Japan is seen as an eternal paradox: we think about the low birthrate, the conformity, the salarymen and then on the other side there are men who wear lace or carry around body pillows with pictures of naked anime girls on them. Japan is portrayed as either sexless or sex-crazed, conformist or just plain fucking weird. The in-between isn't really noted because it's not interesting. Journalists don't think of normalcy as news, and because of that, news about Japan tends to send a message that all of Japan is extremely polarized.
It is extremely crucial to take these pop culture stories seriously, if only because one-sided coverage can so easily push a story into that dreaded "weird Japan" narrative instead of humanizing people who obviously have a story to tell.
Earlier this month, the New York Times ran a story called "Cult of the Living Doll in Tokyo" that contained several inaccuracies and did not present an educated view on Japanese fashion. The thing is, this is not an isolated incident, and reporters frequently make mistakes like this all the time. I've gone through the "Living Doll" article and pulled out some of the most glaring errors.
1. _____ Fashion is anti-woman.
In the West, a somewhat condescending verdict on Japanese women has long been that they are too submissive and doll-like. For close to a decade, the Japanese media have exhorted women to fight against this image by toughening up and coming into their own.
In the past year, however, that kind of talk has been increasingly fallen on deaf ears among some young women who actually aspire to look like dolls.
Probably the most annoying and offensive stereotype I read about Japanese fashion is about how anti-feminst certain subcultures are. Views on feminism are obviously going to differ from person to person.
No matter if a style is considered sexy or doll like or if its participants are considered flirtatious or passive, what's entirely important to note is that these girls, for whatever reason, have chosen to present themselves in a way that outside society does not usually find permissible. What's more, these girls are dressing to make themselves happy at the expense of being found sexually attractive. Although I doubt most mori girls or gyaru dress a certain way to further a feminist agenda, they do inadvertently rebel against gender roles and mainstream society simply by dressing how they want.
Foreign mori girls on Livejournal weighed in on the NYT article and shared my concerns about these fashions being seen as an excuse for women to act weak. It's patronizing to assume that someone thinks a certain way based solely on clothing.
2. Easily curable inaccuracies
The Ageha, or swallowtail butterfly, girls, began to appear in 2008 and show a similar mistrust of the real world. Their aim is to look as much as possible like the blow-up figurines men buy online, only with flamboyant makeup.
This is why simply searching Google is extremely helpful. Despite the article's assertion, there is no fashion style called Ageha. Koakuma Ageha is the name of a fashion magazine that specializes in agejo fashion, a type of gyaru (gal) fashion that is commonly worn by those in the hostessing industry. My guess is that it has also been around longer than 2008, seeing as the magazine itself has been around for longer.
The link with agejo to the hostessing community is something I personally wondered was not expounded on in the NYT article, seeing as though it is talked about quite frankly within the Ageha magazine. Although in no way are agejo trying to look like blow up dolls (and I think most would be rather insulted by the suggestion that they would try to look like something so tacky), there is a sexual side to agejo fashion because of hostessing's ties to sex work.
The other perplexing thing about this article was this snippet:
“I like it when everything about me feels artificial,” said Kiyomi, 23, who likes to buy her clothes at Jesus Diamante, a boutique specializing in the Ageha look.
Jesus Diamante is known primarily for its association with himegyaru style, not agejo. While there are some crossover in hairstyles and some brands, the way the fashions are put together is entirely different.
To make it a little easier to see what I'm talking about, the background dancers in this video are models from Koakuma Ageha. I'd say that they look as much like blow up dolls as any beauty pageant contestant: not at all.
This is himegyaru style in which the girls are wearing Jesus Diamante:
3. The false dichotomy
...Some young women who actually aspire to look like dolls.
They are divided into two distinct genres: the increasingly popular “Mori,” or forest, girls, and the “Ageha,” or swallowtail butterfly, girls.
This makes it sounds as if Agejo and Mori girls are reactions against one another, which is not true. This also makes it sound as if the main purpose of agejo and mori girl is to look like dolls, which also is false. Both styles do take some doll-like elements, but that is not purely the focus of the look.
Does this agejo picture from the Japan Times look any more doll-like than what would be found on the runway in Western countries? What about this photo of mori girls?
On the subject of doll-like fashion, there is an obvious void about this article -- mori girls and agejo aren't the only fashion that utilize a doll-like look. Lolita fashion often uses doll imagery in its photo shoots, printed fabric, and even in the cut of the dresses themselves. If any Japanese fashion is trying to look like dolls, it is lolita fashion.
Okay, so what can be done?
- Talk to multiple people involved in the subculture in both Japan and abroad.
- Google search everything, and don't rely on other mainstream media depictions of a subculture. They probably have it wrong too. Instead, look at homemade sites, blogs, Livejournal, and Mixi for information. These places are more likely to have insider information.
- Don't just skim the surface when it comes to finding sources. In the foreign lolita community, there is one blogger in particular that is notorious for being very good at marketing herself as an expert lolita even though her reputation within the subculture is that she's both uninformed and extremely rude. I understand it's hard to weed out bad sources, but it becomes a lot easier to do so if you talk to multiple people.
- Talk to shopstaff at the brand stores and check your information out with them. They are meant to represent a brand, and thus, a subculture. It is their job to be up-to-date on the latest trends, and they don't get positions in popular stores without being a part of the subculture itself.
- Don't assume you know their reasons for dressing a certain way. Don't try to make up a narrative to connect things that shouldn't be connected. If it's just fashion, just let it be fashion. Let their own quotes speak for themselves.
- These are subcultures, so make sure you let your readers know that this is not the norm. How are these subcultures seen by people on the outside?
- In short, just leave your own expectations at the door and talk to as many people as possible.
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