Right, in that it is important for boys to eventually 'lose innocence' and become Real Men whereas it is imperative for girls to not 'ruin innocence' and to self-consciously guard it until in Marriage or at least Love & a Steady Relationship.
Childhood & adolescence have not been identical, but in a recent obsession with 'child pornography,' it seems that the distinction has been elided for the benefit of the Right and anti-porn feminists. That said, in terms of cultural production (both in animated cartoon sadist fantasies [of the kind that Doug says fascinates Annalee Newitz] and works of artists like Sally Mann), the tendency seems to me to diminish the distinction.
>However, after reading your post (and thank you) I can see I have not been
>clear. Yes, shoujo is linked to pornography in the way you suggest (and of
>course that is not only true of Japan). But I was actually referring to
>repeated references (in magazines, newspapers, on TV and in 'commentary' on
>Japan in other countries) to coverage of shoujo prostitutes. A Japanese
>academic responded to a recent paper by stating that this coverage and this
>'public' representation of schoolgirls choosing (as distinct, apparently,
>from needing) to be prostitutes was so extensive as to have altered the
>public understanding of shoujo to be as he put it 'almost synonymous' with
>prostitution. I would have thought this was one of those beatup dominant
>narratives -- like sleazy selfindulgent single mothers -- but he didn't
>seem to think so. The fact that you don't seem to have heard of it wouldn't
>seem to support him, but I'm still very curious.
Well, 'Japanese public culture' isn't a homogeneous entity, so I can imagine that what your Japanese academic friend says may be actually going on in, say, tabloid journalism. (I just don't have access to the low end of Japanese mass culture.) Sex sells, and stories of schoolgirls offering sexual service must sell even more briskly than usual. What better fantasies to sell to men with disposable incomes who are tired of mature & demanding women? As for news coverage of Japan in foreign countries, the 'schoolgirls as prostitutes' stories you refer to, I'm sure, belong in the Fujiyama/Geisha/Hot Mama-san genre of discourse on women in Japan in particular and Asian women in general. Quentin Crisp said, 'There is no sin like being a woman.' I'd revise his quip and say, 'There is no joke like being an Asian woman.'
>I'm teaching _Lolita_ this semester and am currently rereading it (also
>playing one of the Benten groups, Lolita 18 -- definitely a ref. to that
>schoolgirl fetish you mention). I'd qualify what you say here first by
>saying that it's not teenagers' bodies but adolescent bodies and, moreover,
>the girls' adolescent body works rather differently in most social contexts
>than the boys'.
Most likely, though Calvin Klein may have changed it somewhat, for better and worse. And what of _Titanic_ and Leo DiCaprio? _My Own Private Idaho_? _Macho Dancer_?
In the context of Japan, if you read classic works of 'shoujo manga' by Yamagishi Ryoko, Hagio Moto, Yoshida Akimi, etc., you'll see that the (homo)eroticization of adolescent male bodies is a point of departure for the (fantasy) work of girl culture.
>>On a somewhat positive note, 'shoujo' + 'shonen,' when used by girls
>>themselves, may be figures of resistance--resistance toward gender-defined
>>roles hemmed in by Work and Home.
>And this is fascinating because you're right and yet shoujo is not
>resistance in the same way as girl is in predominantly Anglophone cultures.
>There are important continguities, but it's not the same and that is where
>I am really very interested.
I could continue this discussion, but how much (or how little) do you or other listers know about Japan, its language, its history, its cultures, etc.? I'd hate to be a native informant for left orientalist cruising.
>Yes and use of Japanese 'girl culture' in the States or Australia is
>certainly a form of orientalism -- a homogenisation of what it that might
>be and also an insistence on the translatability of 'Western' conceptions
>of girlhood. Is that diverse specificity that's hardest to grasp from my
>position.
A difficult thing is that an emphasis on diversity and specificity can also be an exercise in orientalism. One of those aporias, no?
>This shortchanges her a little. Some of this predictable (now, for me and
>it seems also for you -- which doesn't make it irrelevant or uninteresting)
>narrative is there, but there are some intriguing things, such as her
>discussion of shoujo as a gender.
OK, I'll check it out when I can. It's just that I never had much interest in Takarazuka, even when I was in Japan.
>>Here again is a problem of the banality
>>of cultural studies. Once you read Janice Radway, Angela McRobbie, Henry
>>Jenkins, Constance Penley, etc., you've read them all.
>
>Ah well I didn't and still don't want to play bag/defend cultural studies,
>though I will if you want. Your last sentence seems to me both circular
>(what goes into the etc. after all?) and incorrect -- what of the
>differences between these people and what, more importantly, of the
>cultural studies this list does not at all encompass.
You don't have to defend cultural studies from me, but I do think that much of its current output leaves a lot to be desired, to say the least--the same for any other discipline, I say.
Yoshie