Throughout the semester we have asked ourselves, “What is East Asia?” East Asia clusters together many countries that may have some similarities but also have very unique histories and experiences, while youth is a socially constructed term that also culturally varies.  Here I will be using the term “youth” as something that does not quite exist outside of capitalism and that is tied to American culture. In this paper I want to look at how precarious jobs including those that use their body for performance and as a work site have contributed to the changing expectations for heterosexual relationships.

Both male and female youth have contributed to the societal change of the use of the body since post-Fordism; however, the same tension that was seen in Fordism between work and pleasure is visited in host clubs and other jobs that use the body as a performance.  This tension includes the pressure to consume while also being the manufacturers.  During Fordism, men would be working in the factories all day to build these products (that they most likely could not afford), but simultaneously on the weekends spend their money on things because consumerism was being encouraged.  For men and women using their bodies as a work site it is somewhat similar but their factory is their body.  Do they use their bodies in their free time for themselves?  Do they feel societal pressure to follow the narrative of love and reproduction?  This is a tension of using your body for sexual pleasure because the line between work and desire can be blurred as read about in Enjo Kosai and The Great Happiness Space.   As we have learned, relationships are always transactional, so when these sex workers create relationships it is interesting to think about how they approach their personal relationships, sexual and emotional goals that they want/need to obtain simultaneously.  Men in factories also trade their young able bodies for time similar to the way sex work is exchanged.  However, the idea of factory working does not offend people the way sex work does because it is under neoliberal structures.  

A key influence that connects sex work to relationships is how employment greatly contributes to marriage.  Economic stability is important to many when getting married.  With changing times and women having more economic power than in the past it seems that women are now looking for profound authentic love instead of primary goal of kinship and reproducing.  There is increased individualization, which is different from narratives we have heard about in terms of collectiveness in East Asia.  People’s self-identity is negotiated through linked processes of self-exploration and beyond that, the development of intimacy with the other. 

With the consumption of men and women at host/hostess clubs in East Asia the apparent structure of feeling emerges for the consumers.  Many of the women shown in The Great Happiness Space claimed that these men would help make their fantasies come true.  How may you ask?  These men act as accessories to their lives, like a nice watch, having a beautiful, dutiful man gives them status and gratification. The consumption becomes a lifestyle that also contributes to their gender, youth, and class identity formation. By having these men it makes them feel more like a woman, younger, and more confident.  The women attending these clubs are paying men to listen to them while the media displays the men as hustling fake-affection.   

The men help with their identity formation and reassuring their class because they are in some ways treated as a commodity.  However, they are usually treated as a special, well taken care-of-commodity.  The men and women are seen as more legitimate and treated as a high class commodity while streetwalkers (prostitutes) are “criminalized” and judged as panic sites and often times their sexuality is seen as “impure” (lecture 3/5/15).  

Simultaneously In Ho’s piece, “From Spice Girls to “enjo kosai”: formations of teenage girls', the author looks at how the few girls that show some degree of sexual adventurism are deemed as problem girls that are doomed in society.  This has been a concurrent theme in class as well.  It especially correlates to the relationship that streetwalkers had to society as opposed to the ones that were recognized by the government as boosting the Japanese economy.  

In Ho’s piece, “From Spice Girls to Enjo Kosai: Formations of Teenage Girls’ Sexualities in Taiwan”, she explains the “increasing visibility of teenage sexuality reflects not necessary a decay in moral values but the changing reality of sexuality in history”  (325).  In her analysis she looks at three ways in which this happens.  The first being the popular entertainment/commodity culture in which teenage girls have found construction for their own sexual selves.  Second, the changing sex culture that they are contributing to its formation as they forge new sexual values, identities, and practices.  Lastly, she looks at the increasingly customized sex work industry that they are creating in their effort to find new forms of economic prospects and social intercourse.  

In this reading I also noticed the pattern between underemployed versus unemployed and the sexualized girls that are famous and helping build the nation versus the blue-collar betel nut girls that are just seen as trashy.  The underemployed help the nation monetarily but the unemployed deteriorate the reputation of the country.  We have learned about this in class and it is zoomed in on page 332 when Ho explains how many turn to enjo kosai because they have been humiliated by their education system. 

In the arrival of enjo kosai it’s interesting that the drama series incorporates sickness (Aids) for such a “sexy” topic.  The show includes discourse on the cycle of life and death, but manages to make it sexy for viewers.  However, it is still seen as improper to communicate about the actual sex despite the fact that none of us would be here without it.

Through various readings in class we have learned how the ideas of intimacy is changing in its expectations and practices in gendered ways.  Cook suggests that there is a significant miscommunication between male and females in terms of intimate relationships.   Despite the fact that ideas of intimacy vary depending on culture, social and historical context it is clear that these ideas and practices are changing for youth in East Asia.  As for the women that work in the Japanese hostess clubs we learned about, we understand that women in that culture are supposed to be innocent, playful, enchanting, and keep their youthfulness while still becoming women.  Some of these expectations are rooted in Magical Girl, which created standards for Japanese women.  This animation created flat and exaggerated visual styles.  However, more recently the character has transformed from just “a girl before marriage” to a character that is “cute and lovable”.

These ideas come up in Cook’s Intimate Expectations and Practices: Freeter Relationship and Marriage in Contemporary Japan.  In this piece we are introduced to precarious men who almost take on a historical feminine role because of this economic status.  We are introduced to women that date male freeters for the sole purpose of not wanting to get married and knowing that the freeters are less traditional and adamant about this event. The women report that they are looking for shared hobbies, communication and responsibility which are much more likely to happen with freeters rather than men with stable jobs. This agency for women of denying the traditional roles in Japanese marriage exemplifies some of Japan’s social anxiety about youth and about changing gender norms in Japan.  The submissive woman is no longer the only narrative a woman can follow.  This defiance of marriage, gender normativity, and domesticity creates anxiety for older generations because they feel as though they are losing control of society and worry what the future will be for their children, grandchildren, etc. 

One of the first questions we were asked in class was where Asian youth were?  One of the answers was clubs.  Host clubs are an “alternate form of romance and heterosexuality” (Takeyama, 212).  We have read about both male and female youth using their bodies as performers and consequently creating a moral panic in society.  In terms of youth in general, we have learned how it is socially constructed in some ways but are almost always coded as a group that could cause societal damage

Sources:

Dixon, Dwayne Lecture 3/5/15, Duke University

Ho, Josephine, “From Spice Girls to enjo kosai: formations of teenage girls' sexualities in Taiwan,” Inter-Asia Cultural Studies, 01/2003, Volume 4, Issue 2

 “The Great Happiness Space”

Takeyama, Akiko. 2005. Commodified Romance in a Tokyo Host Club. Pp. 200- 215. In Mark McLelland and romit Dasgupta , eds. Genders, Transgenders and Sexualities in Japan. New York: Routledge. Pp. 200-215.

Cook, Emma. 1014. Intimate Expectations and Practices: Freeter Relationships and Marriage in Contemporary Japan. Pp. 36-51. In Asian Anthropology. London: Mortimer House. Pp. 36-51