While frequently tied to discourses on consumerism, trend-setting, and socio-(sub)cultural groups, there has been a dearth of analysis on fashion as a purposeful site of meaning making. Although the media and intellectuals alike alternately identify women’s conspicuous consumption as an example of their increased spending power or a sign of their irresponsibility in material (economic) matters, they rarely analyze the factors behind that consumption.

One of the major contributors, of course, is the media itself: television advertisements, magazines, even the particular deployment of certain products in movies and TV shows all play a role in establishing certain consumption patterns as the ideal to which all individuals should strive. The media frenzy over who is wearing who, the ubiquity of certain brands, and the copious attention paid to every detail of movie star’s appearances also contribute to this fantasy construction, but it’s just that, a fantasy. The average person can never achieve the same ‘look’—yet this very fact feeds their consumption, the search for an attainable replica.

While it is true that such a cycle affects both men and women, I would argue that it impacts women (and particularly the production of femininity) more greatly because women have come to be defined by their consumption; despite the participation of women in the modern workforce, the common paradigm continues to be that men earn the money and women spend it. Thus, men are defined by their work lives, their jobs, their career, and women are defined by—what? The things they fill their house with, the things they put on their bodies? (For more discussion of the significance and worth of the (female) body and the impact of media, see the linked page.) According to Caroline Evans and Minna Thornton in their analysis of “Fashion, Representation, Femininity,” if we take women’s fashion seriously “as a field of representations of the female body, it then becomes a significant text of how culture constructs femininity and how it addresses that representation to women” (Evans and Thornton 48).  Significantly, the authors describe the “transference of interest from the body to clothes” as a key factor in the attraction and power of fashion: the commodification of women’s bodies is both a significant part of what drives the fashion industry and also resultantly what gives fashion its power to construct meaning.

It is at this juncture that fashion arises as a key contributor not only to the cultural production of femininity, but also possibly to women’s production of themselves. Just as neoliberalism’s individualization (outsourcing responsibility for the self) may empower individuals to move beyond the system even as it protects itself from risk, so too may fashion empower the individuals it systematically seeks to define (via the consumer discourse) by allowing them to deploy it in their own meaning making projects.

According to the authors, “worn fashion generates meaning” (Evans and Thornton 52). Thus, purposefully wearing certain fashions in certain ways generates a certain meaning, which may well be counter-hegemonic. Evans and Thornton specifically discuss female fashion designers Westwood and Kawabuko’s avoidance of phallocentrism in their clothing—“their failure to refer to the patriarchy” in their work, and thus their denial of the social construction of femininity as other, a difference from the norm. For more on meaning making through clothing design, see the article discussed. Here, I am more concerned with the particular use of fashion by individuals in Japan—namely, girl style in Japan and its possibilities of self-empowerment.

One of the most obvious examples is the kogyaru trend, which began to garner media attention in the mid 1990s. Kogyaru goes well beyond the choice of clothing (school girl uniforms, often composites of pieces from the most popular schools, coupled with flashy luxury brand items). It also encompasses a method of behaving—eschewing traditionally acceptable feminine behavior to squat on street corners in a manner reminiscent of working class men, using crude language, posing for pictures with ugly faces, etc.—which slips at times into (or perhaps was always) a performance. This is especially visible in the practice of “pseudo clandestine transformations,” changing clothes in the public restrooms at the mall, applying makeup and making outfit adjustments in transit, and more. Essentially, part and parcel of the trend was the concept of its visibility, of being seen, and kogyaru was less a fashion than a purposeful pose (Kinsella 63).

Although simplistic, this short clip by the Super Gals (characters of a popular Japanese anime show) explaining how to be a Super Gal describes and portrays the kogyaru trend quite tellingly. It is worth noting the blatant appeal to attention; the gals are explaining themselves, as if they know the media and public are watching and analysing them. From the very beginning, the ties to consumption practices are quite clear; Ran, the narrator's, very first rule includes that "gals gotta have good clothes." And yet, Ran adds, "there are like a billion ways to look like a gal" (emphasis hers)--and ends the clip by saying that "being a gal isn't all about looking great in cool clothes...being a gal is a way of life." (Interestingly, the Super Gals mock other fashion trends (here, ganguro as if the subcultures weren't intimately linked or produced by the same impulse; this will be discussed later in the page.)

The clear presence of kogyaru in popular cultural products emphasizes a further point; as the trend began to capture attention, as the media began to pay attention, “this composite of luxury brand and school uniform became the outfit of deviance imprinted on the public imagination.” Although the emergence of the style was thus heavily constructed by the media and transmitted via life magazines and photo subculture, the kogyaru were quick to take advantage of their infamy, “thriv[ing] on media stereotypes of gauche and lumpen prostitute schoolgirls, and the play and work opportunities offered through capturing the attention of media, academic, and government bodies” (Kinsella 61).  These types of play (playing with media and authority expectations) included the previously mentioned mixture of uniforms, “an anti-authoritarian mix and match that incorporated some of the signature items from the better schools.” By incorporating the official signs of the system (uniform pieces) in their rebellion, the girls made it harder for the system to insist on their strict adherence to its dictates. A similar strategy was at work in the kogyaru “adult look,” creating the image “of inappropriately sexualized young girls” which, when coupled with their behaviours (loitering, coarse language, gestures, etc.) “suggested that they were actively soliciting customers” (Kinsella 64). The girls captured the media’s attention by mimicking the desirable traits of the schoolgirl (male) visual culture construct, capitalizing on popular fascination with the practices of underage prostitution and compensated dating that were condemned in the individual, so much so that they were ‘misread’ as being enjo kosai themselves.

The point here is the visibility and popularity of a so-called ‘deviant’ practice; the kogyaru captured media attention by posing themselves as apparently enjo kosai, and yet that pose had a different meaning, calling out the mainstream media and the public for condemning the practices they so obviously fascinated by. In a society with austere attitudes, they were disheveled; in a society with strict social customs and ideas of femininity, they were lewd and loud; in a society where school was the path towards proper socialization, and taking up one’s role in society, they put the school uniform on display as a sign of truancy; in a society where self-betterment was the ideal, they posed on street corners as the picture of nonchalance.

 For the kogyaru, fashion was more than a consumption practice; it was a way of announcing an identity and challenging mainstream conceptions of what that identity should be. And kogyaru is not the only example of this proclamation, or rather, it was the point from which that proclamation developed--thus the irony in the Super Gals condemning ganguro style for not being 'pure;' as kogyaru developed into other styles and fashions, the only common thread became taking and subverting (sub)cultural styles into a symbol of empowerment which could only be coded as deviant despite their obvious visibility to and in the mainstream. In gyaru culture, girls accused of being prostitutes “flaunted crudely exaggerated signs of sexual availability and materialism,” while ganguro style, fusing kogyaru with (exaggerated) elements of African American culture as a consolidation of deviancy (Kinsella 137). What followed was a blooming of subcultural, transracial trends which suggested a refusal to proscribe to Japanese conceptions of femininity as pure and essentially asexual (see the linked article on the shojo, or magical girl, which epitomizes this type). It is interesting to note the transbordering elements of female empowerment and the tie ins to other (sub)cultures. With the rise of the internet, the possibilities of the fourth space, and the continuance of transnational and transglobal flows, the struggle for female empowerment in a neoliberal system has become far more than a struggle against the particularities of a single place. While this path has focused on examples in Japan, the struggle is much broader, and thus its challenges (and its tools) may be found in the repurposing and repositioning of cultural elements from around the globe.

Works Cited:

Evans, Caroline, and Minna Thornton. "Fashion, Representation, Femininity." Feminist Review 38 (1991): 48-66. JSTOR. Web. Accessed 28 April 2015.

"How to Be a Super Gal" Youtube. Uploaded July 2006. Accessed 30 April 2015.

Kinsella, Sharon. "Kogyaru Chic: Dressing up as a Delinquent Girl." Schoolgirls, Money, and Rebellion in Japan. Taylor and Francis 2013. 60-87.

Kinsella, Sharon. "Ganguro, Yamanba, and Transracial Style." Schoolgirls, Money, and Rebellion in Japan. Taylor and Francis 2013. 130-150.

1. Delinquent Girls and Capitalist Consumption