Media Impact on Girl's Weight: Japan Edition (with pictures!)

WARNING: Post may contain triggering material for those with sensitive body issues. Please read at your own discretion. 



Click on the images to make them larger.

Popular in our blogging subjects is the effects of the media on girl's body image. It is a worldwide problem. Models are portrayed as an ideal, whereas the many different body types in the world are not taken into account, and the fact that many models are sick because of the pressure to be thin and what they have done to their bodies to get there. A big culprit of this is Japan, and so far, there is virtually no backlash on this issue.

Everyone, meet Tsubasa Masuwaka. Tsubasa is arguably Japan's most known model and idol for young adults and teens. She is always on the cover of some magazine or product ad, and she has her own make-up and colored contact lens lines which are insanely popular.

Here are Tsubasa's measurements.

Tsubasa is 5 feet tall and 83 lbs.
Her BMI is 16.2.
At the age of 25, she is dangerously underweight.

And yet, she is the norm, which millions of Japanese girls and women see advertising their products every day. The thinner, the better, and girls and women alike are hurting themselves to reach low ideal, despite the fact that Japanese body types vary just like they do here.

I like to read a Japanese fashion magazine, called EGG, which caters to girls roughly 16-25. All of the girls in these magazines are thin, tan, made-up and flawless. There is always a weight loss section:

Do either of the girls in their "Before" photos look like they need to lose weight? And yet, the magazine boasts that Girl One went from 94 lbs to 81 lbs.
Girl Two, at 5'2, clearly needed to lose those 33 lbs, didn't she? She went from a healthy 127 lbs to a celebrated 94. In my opinion, this is so, so wrong.

It's sad what girls have to go through in many different cultures. Everyone is on a diet, everyone needs to lose those pounds.. when these girls should be told that they're perfect the way they are!

A Reality Pitch: Carbon Footprint Awareness

After watching the film The Age of Stupid, I found myself so worked up over the sheer idiocy of local people portrayed. Especially regarding the wind turbines in England: the woman who was so proud of their victory in committee against non-polluting energy.. Yeah, you should be so proud of yourself! You've sped up our course to extinction. I'm sure your great-great grandkids will be thanking you for that perfect view of an empty field when natural resources have plummeted and it's far too late to turn back. 

I believe there is only one way to get simple-minded folk like that's attention. I recalled that new reality show Extreme Couponing (I'm cringing for mankind right now). Ever since that show debuted, and people saw the money that these women saved, couponing has actually increased. Hooray for consumerism.

People need to realize what trouble we're really in. To raise awareness, I got an idea, so hear me out, classmates. There should be a reality show where a team visits families and shows them their personal carbon footprint. They tell them what lies down the road in 30 years if their habits keep up, and how to reduce their footprint. 

It can be hosted on TLC, like all other good reality shows that the older crowd watch, and a good, charismatic host can convince people they are wrong. Hell, maybe even wrangle in a celebrity for the cause. If anything, people will become aware of their emissions just to see if so-and-so celebrity is going to visit their house.

It needs an attention-grabbing name, and I was never one for naming things. As media students in this day and age, we can bring awareness like this! Don't you think it's our duty? Of course we can sit back and live a peaceful life, consuming selfishly, and never think about the consequences. Wouldn't you rather try and make a difference for the future?

A ¥MONSTER

An article popped up on my Twitter feed recently which I felt like I needed to respond to.

Yahoo ordered to pay damages over photo

The Yomiuri Shimbun

The Tokyo District Court has ordered Yahoo Japan Corp. and The Sankei Shimbun to pay a total of 660,000 yen in compensation over a photo of a handcuffed man carried on Yahoo Japan's Web site.

Yahoo Japan's public relations department said they believed this is the first time a Web site operator has been ordered to pay damages for news articles or photos originally distributed by media outlets.

The photo featured the late Kazuyoshi Miura, former president of an import company, who was acquitted in 2003 in Japan of charges he was involved in the fatal 1981 shooting of his wife Kazumi in Los Angeles. The controversial photo was taken when Miura was arrested over another case in September 1985. In the photo, Miura was handcuffed and accompanied by police officers.

In October 2008, Miura committed suicide in a Los Angeles jail. He had been detained over the 1981 murder for seven months in the U.S. territory of Saipan before being transferred to Los Angeles.

Miura's wife at the time of his suicide filed a lawsuit against Yahoo Japan and The Sankei Shimbun, demanding a total of 6.6 million yen for emotional distress due to the photo.

"The photo harmed the feelings of the bereaved family," presiding Judge Shigeo Matsunami said in the ruling Wednesday. Regarding Yahoo Japan's responsibility, he said, "The company neglected its duty in preventing the photo from being carried [on the Web site]."

In its report on Miura's suicide, The Sankei Shimbun distributed the 1985 photo along with other photos and articles. The photo was carried on the Yahoo site.

During the hearing, Yahoo Japan said, "We were not involved in writing the articles or taking the photos, so we have no responsibility."

However, the court decision said, "Based on the content of the accompanying articles, we don't see why it was necessary to carry the photo. Yahoo Japan shares the responsibility of making the photo public [with The Sankei Shimbun]."

"We'll consider our next move after we read the court ruling," a Yahoo Japan spokesperson said.

Masao Horibe, professor emeritus at Hitotsubashi University and expert in information law, said, "The ruling recognizes the responsibility of Web-based media and takes into account influence of the Internet."

"For Web site operators, it's a huge burden to check every single article, but they need to establish a system to do so considering the influence their sites have on users," he said.

After reading this, I felt.. angry! I couldn't believe on picture of a man would cause 660,000 yen worth of "emotional distress". By the way, 660,000 yen is not a small number.. it's $81,787!! For what? 

It was not a photo of this man's dead body.

It was not an incriminating photo of his living relatives.

It was a photo from 1985! 

Japan is truly notorious for it's almost sketchy media, with names often witheld in dangerous cases, and as a whole society is very hush-hush. But in my opinion, asking 81 thousand bucks because a little photo of a criminal hurt your feelings is greed. It's exploitation, and in a sense, it's a violation! I don't expect to have other countries to have the exact same freedoms and restrictions as the United States. But is press not free? Is the condemnation of free press not unethical? This article truly bogged my mind.

Media and Body Image: Turning it Around

**warning: some posts might be NSFW.


Many of my classmates and I are noticing how strictly the media dictates how women should look. Advertisements for diet aids are everywhere, television casts an unrealistic "norm" for young girls (as well as older audiences, who should know better!) and the effects of these images can be devastating on a susceptible mind.

In the USA, it is estimated that 10 million girls and 1 million boys are suffering from an eating disorder. Expectations from television, movies, magazines and advertisements are confusing to a young viewer, and so they can really damage their bodies in the quest to become "perfect" as society has taught us.

However, there is one social media website that working hard to turn this right around.

StopHatingYourBody is a blog hosted on the popular media site Tumblr. This blog promotes self-acceptance and destroys the unattainable idea of "perfection", by insisting every body is functional and perfect just the way it is. The blog accepts submissions and stories from brave users who wish to tell their stories of self-acceptance, or where they are in their journey. There is no tolerance for negative comments on this site, and I am particularly impressed with the warm, understanding atmosphere it provides. The idea started out small, but more and more people feel comfortable sharing their images and stories every day.

I think it's a beautiful idea, and I have so much respect for the people who are brave enough to stand up against society's standards and say, "This is me, and I am perfect just the way I am".

Genre: Horror Across Cultures

The section on genre for reading this week interested me. The book delves into classifications of horror, and how difficult it can sometimes be. I have to agree.

Speaking in a broad sense, when I think of American horror films I think of the slasher, blood and guts films without a deeper psychological plot. When I want something to really make me think, I have the idea to look at foreign "horror" films instead. Sitting down to blog about it, though, I realize I am wrong, and I will talk about this.

The book poses the question, is classification of horror changing? I believe it has always been ambiguous, and that understanding of it needs to be changed. There are classically two types of horror, blood and guts and really frightening movies that get under your skin. So many movies, though, fall somewhere in between!

When it comes to blood and guts horror, there's Friday the 13th, Nightmare on Elm Street.. The Hills Have Eyes, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. These movies are all American films, and the horror in them is the amount of brutal murder of seemingly average people, just like the viewer.
When it comes to psychological thrillers, I immediately thought of a French horror movie I recently watched called High Tension. It was about two women trying to escape a murderer after them.. but by the end of the film, the viewer realizes the film is not as shallow as that. It's actually a film about a woman suffering from split personality disorder and hallucinations, and throughout the whole film, the second woman is actually trying to get away from her.


But there are so many other kinds of American horror- for example, there is the Sixth Sense, which I believe classifies more as a thriller than horror, though it deals with ghost and it's terrifying ilk. Silence of the Lambs is another, as well as Psycho and all other Hitchcockian films, a term our book describes.

It's really not that easy though, and I have to think about my favorite horror movie of all time, Saw! The movie, on the outside is just another bloody "torture" movie which has become popular in American horror films lately. But with the amount of times I have watched these movies, I have to argue, they are more than that! Saw has a coherent plotline throughout all of the movies, and the movies add in elements of mystery and moral tension, so much that the "bad guy" becomes relatable. More than just a horror movie for cheap thrills and blood, Saw is psychological and makes it's viewers think, so much that the violence becomes secondary to the film, even.

... Right, guys?

mixi: Social Networks Around the World

Myspace, Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr- without a hint of doubt social networking has captured the American populace and does not seem interested in letting go. Twitter has taken over the world, and is praised for it's usefulness in getting out top news and real stories from crisis areas we may not have even heard of otherwise.

When it comes to familiar social networking, though, the rest of the world isn't necessarily addicted to Facebook. Different countries have their own online procrastination tools. With that, I will talk about Japan's "place for friends":

mixi.jp is Facebook from The Land of the Rising Sun. Mixi was created in 2004 by entrepreneur Kenji Kasahara, and dominates 80% of the social networking market in Japan. As of 2008 there were over 21 million registered users on the site.

Some features of mixi sound familiar to us Facebook users: members can upload albums and photos, write on each other's profile, play games, update statuses on the news feed, write in a diary (like "notes"), and many others.

A feature called ashiato ("footprint") lets a user know who has looked at their profile, which could actually be an average Facebook user (aka stalker)'s worst nightmare.

The differences beyond that, though, may show a little insight into the Japanese psyche. Unlike Facebook, in order to register for mixi, you need to have a valid Japanese cell phone number. This rule actually bars anyone who does not live in Japan access to the website. Japan has a history of being a closed-off country, which had refused contact from the western world until 1854. Even today, the country can sometimes be seen as a xenophobic society, illustrated by many examples: Just one being the  refusal to allow anyone else from another country to join their social websites.