Boyish GALS one-shot mook
Dec. 19th, 2009 12:43 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
imomusIn June of last year I penned an eloquent elegy for the endangered bukkake genre of Japanese porn. So what seems to be replacing that Shinto ritual of repression and release? Since nature -- and porn -- abhors a vacuum, what new fetishes are represented on the combini racks and the DVD shelves of Japan, in the areas designed to get customers a little hot, shifty and breathless?
One answer seems to be provided by a magazine I spotted in my local Family Mart last night, while buying wholesome things like Muji stationery and soup. Boyish GALS is, to be pedantic, a one-shot mook shrink-wrapped with a DVD. I didn't buy it, but as a keen amateur sociologist I couldn't let it go unnoted in these pages.
My analysis of bukkake inevitably raised Shinto's focus on seed -- and agrarian fertility in general -- as a framing device. Using that same frame, what does the rise of "boyish gal" porn tell us about the Japanese sexual psyche in late 2009? Is it a gay development, or a feminist one, or some kind of softcore misogyny, or part of a semi-hikikomori fear of the otherness of the other sex?
One mook doesn't make a winter; I don't think it would be fair to say that a desire for Japanese women to become more boyish represents a step towards sterility and austerity. Certainly you could say that bukkake, invented in 1986 at the height of Japan's profligate economic bubble, represents a certain spendthrift tendency, a gloriously reckless waste of the national seed (something like the necessary lack of necessity Bataille built into his idea of the accursed share). By contrast, a trend for boyish gals would represent mere thrift. A boyish gal won't (in symbolic terms) give birth, which in turn means you won't end up paying money to bring up a child in a difficult world of recession, economic downturn, and so on.
But we should look at this in a wider context. This is an age where pregnancy and giving birth is very highly valued in Japan. The new government is promising wads of extra money to parents, conscious that something needs to be done about Japan's longterm demographic decline. Magazines like Crea (which recently featured a heavily-pregnant Kahimi Karie) and MiLK (Isshiki Sae) have recently fetished female fertility as never before.
It's worth noting the target audiences of these magazines, though. Boyish GALS is aimed at men, whereas Crea and MiLK are women's magazines. Could it be that while Japanese "grass-eating" men (the kind for whom even having a real girlfriend is mendokusai; too much hassle, too costly) dream of ever-less-fertile, ever-more-boyish women, Japanese women fantasize themselves as massive matriarchal baby machines with ever-bigger, ever-more-fruitful bellies?
Bukkake is hardly a fertile genre, if you think about it; sperm delivered to the wrong areas won't make babies. So perhaps it's less a question of fertility falling out of fashion in hard times, and more a question of men liking their sex non-reproductive and women liking it fruitful? We'll continue our penetrating investigations into Japanese fertility when we have more data; watch this space.
One answer seems to be provided by a magazine I spotted in my local Family Mart last night, while buying wholesome things like Muji stationery and soup. Boyish GALS is, to be pedantic, a one-shot mook shrink-wrapped with a DVD. I didn't buy it, but as a keen amateur sociologist I couldn't let it go unnoted in these pages.
My analysis of bukkake inevitably raised Shinto's focus on seed -- and agrarian fertility in general -- as a framing device. Using that same frame, what does the rise of "boyish gal" porn tell us about the Japanese sexual psyche in late 2009? Is it a gay development, or a feminist one, or some kind of softcore misogyny, or part of a semi-hikikomori fear of the otherness of the other sex?One mook doesn't make a winter; I don't think it would be fair to say that a desire for Japanese women to become more boyish represents a step towards sterility and austerity. Certainly you could say that bukkake, invented in 1986 at the height of Japan's profligate economic bubble, represents a certain spendthrift tendency, a gloriously reckless waste of the national seed (something like the necessary lack of necessity Bataille built into his idea of the accursed share). By contrast, a trend for boyish gals would represent mere thrift. A boyish gal won't (in symbolic terms) give birth, which in turn means you won't end up paying money to bring up a child in a difficult world of recession, economic downturn, and so on.
But we should look at this in a wider context. This is an age where pregnancy and giving birth is very highly valued in Japan. The new government is promising wads of extra money to parents, conscious that something needs to be done about Japan's longterm demographic decline. Magazines like Crea (which recently featured a heavily-pregnant Kahimi Karie) and MiLK (Isshiki Sae) have recently fetished female fertility as never before.
It's worth noting the target audiences of these magazines, though. Boyish GALS is aimed at men, whereas Crea and MiLK are women's magazines. Could it be that while Japanese "grass-eating" men (the kind for whom even having a real girlfriend is mendokusai; too much hassle, too costly) dream of ever-less-fertile, ever-more-boyish women, Japanese women fantasize themselves as massive matriarchal baby machines with ever-bigger, ever-more-fruitful bellies?
Bukkake is hardly a fertile genre, if you think about it; sperm delivered to the wrong areas won't make babies. So perhaps it's less a question of fertility falling out of fashion in hard times, and more a question of men liking their sex non-reproductive and women liking it fruitful? We'll continue our penetrating investigations into Japanese fertility when we have more data; watch this space.
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(no subject)
Date: 2009-12-19 04:10 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-12-19 04:11 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-12-19 04:18 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-12-19 10:47 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-12-19 04:36 am (UTC)That's the best "pretty pregnant" picture I've seen in a long time. Makes me want to have a kid. Maybe it's time you started to investigate these questions by starting a reproduction club? It might be fertile grounds for creative inspiration as well...
(no subject)
Date: 2009-12-19 04:44 am (UTC)Could this boyish gal actually be the perfect match, then, for the plain and pure Muji stationery I was purchasing when she caught my eye?
(no subject)
Date: 2009-12-19 04:56 am (UTC)Mucheap
Date: 2009-12-19 05:21 am (UTC)a flaccid tautology
Date: 2009-12-19 05:16 am (UTC)while, the "men want sex with no consequences and women see it as a means to a baby" hasn't made headlines in thousands of years, the idea that japanese women "fantasize" themselves as "baby machines" is a rather timely reference. to the right-wing japanese govt official's exact same wording a while back with regards to how he thought women ought to envision themselves re: the plummeting birth rate, that is. jolly good show!
to be fair, one mook doesnt make a winter, and two mag covers dont make a (female-led) fantasy, either.
Re: a flaccid tautology
Date: 2009-12-19 11:11 am (UTC)It's the only explanation I can think of for the way you torture the English language. either that, or given the penis obsession and the desperate quote dropping, you're a student at an American liberal arts college.
Re: a flaccid tautology
Date: 2009-12-19 11:14 am (UTC)Re: a flaccid tautology
Date: 2009-12-19 11:21 am (UTC)Re: a flaccid tautology
Date: 2009-12-19 11:28 am (UTC)Re: a flaccid tautology
Date: 2009-12-19 07:27 pm (UTC)Re: a flaccid tautology
Date: 2009-12-19 08:47 pm (UTC)As for the first comment, we beg to differ. Its bizarre style was really the most interesting thing about it.
Re: a flaccid tautology
Date: 2009-12-20 05:01 am (UTC)Re: a flaccid tautology
Date: 2009-12-20 09:03 am (UTC)Re: a flaccid tautology
Date: 2009-12-22 08:42 am (UTC)Re: a flaccid tautology
Date: 2009-12-22 06:47 pm (UTC)This is bizarre really. Your persistence and competitiveness is, in its own way, a lovely demonstration of the kind of "phallocentric" stereotype you indulged yourself in with the first comment. The stereotypes don't work - haven't you figured that out yet?
And if I keep coming back and indulging your obsession then I'm in danger of turning into the kind of "asshole" you accused me of being first time round.
So, go ahead, you've got the field to yourself.
Re: a flaccid tautology
Date: 2009-12-23 11:33 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-12-19 05:22 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-12-19 06:49 am (UTC)This is probably a lot of it, but I think there is something analogous to "sexy librarian" going on here too (with an added dash of nympholepsy, and a pinch of 'A Midsummer Night's Dream' -- a kind of sexual holiday from our more rigidly prescriptive sexual identities ). Just as there there is a sense of surprise, of secondary characteristics with an erotic edge being revealed when the "librarian" removes her glasses and shakes her hair loose, so too with the boyish girl, whose nubile, amatory essence is camouflaged by the familiar, non-threatening appearance and costume of a young boy.
(no subject)
Date: 2009-12-19 06:32 am (UTC)Conversations with a father, yesterday, central London
Date: 2009-12-19 09:11 am (UTC)Perhaps "boyish girls" represents simplicity. No rise and fall of a fragile ego, less being or representing or depending on the approval of others, and more doing.
The question is - if this is true - what kind of world placates feminity? Where would simplification happen? What would be the seemingly out-of-kilter female's ideal environment? Can feminism and technology build a more women-friendly world with these things in mind?
Re: Conversations with a father, yesterday, central London
Date: 2009-12-19 12:03 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-12-19 09:44 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-12-19 09:51 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-12-19 11:32 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-12-19 11:47 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-12-19 07:30 pm (UTC)what's a mook?
Date: 2009-12-19 05:23 pm (UTC)Re: what's a mook?
Date: 2009-12-19 05:35 pm (UTC)Re: what's a mook?
Date: 2009-12-19 07:29 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-12-19 05:23 pm (UTC)We could change the world.
(no subject)
Date: 2009-12-19 06:24 pm (UTC)Sorry for being anonymous, but I don't know how to work this thing
Date: 2009-12-19 11:42 pm (UTC)Re: Sorry for being anonymous, but I don't know how to work this thing
Date: 2009-12-21 01:49 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-12-20 09:57 am (UTC)