Do Kawaii aesthetics disempower women?

The aesthetic of kawaii (cute) is a fundamental part of contemporary Japanese

society. This aesthetic, however, is mostly displayed by and linked to females,
especially young women and girls. This would seem only natural, since an important
aspect of kawaii is a sense of innocence; just as it often is in the west, cuteness is
associated with something small and child-like, and is more readily applicable to
women because it does not fit with typical notions of masculinity, such as toughness.
However, unlike in the west, the idea of kawaii is extremely pervasive in Japan; it is
displayed by women in a number of ways – including appearance and behaviour – and
reflected in a number of different mediums, such as anime and manga. Kawaii thus
forms an ideal femininity – a way in which females can be considered attractive by
males. It is because it is such a widely held ideal, however, that it becomes problematic;
it has been criticised by feminists because it “drives women to be childish, which
subordinates them to men”.1 Kawaii can take many forms throughout Japanese society
and, as such, it can be difficult to make one conclusion about the nature of kawaii. This
essay will explore how kawaii can be seen to both disempower and empower women,
also discussing the problem of adaptive preferences and ultimately arguing that,
although it contains disempowering elements, it is too complicated to label in any
straightforward manner.

While the word kawaii is normally translated into English as ‘cute’, the Japanese
word has further meanings: it is “related to kawaiso (‘pitiful’, ‘touching’) and
kawaigaru (‘to love’, ‘make a pet of’, ‘take loving care of’). To be cute triggers a
sympathetic response in another, leading to an emotional involvement and perhaps an
attachment. A focus on powerlessness - whether seen in infants, small animals, or pretty
but defenceless females - leads to empathy”.2 Kawaii is usually expressed in child-like
behaviour or appearance, frilly, round or small things, and a cheerful disposition. Here
we already see that the concept of kawaii is present in many things, including objects,
fashion, attitudes and behaviour. It is also heavily linked to consumer culture; it was
during the 1970s, when Sanrio (the company who produced Hello Kitty) started up,
where the kawaii movement is said to have its origins.3 Of course, it is only natural that,
in order for people to surround or adorn themselves with ‘cute’ things, they need money
to buy them. As such, the height of kawaii style was during the 1980s, by which time
the economy had made its miraculous recovery after the Second World War. Kawaii is
also linked to another type of consumption: cultural consumption, in the form of anime,
manga, and aidoru (idol). An important aspect of kawaii associated with these mediums
is the shōjo (young girl). Just on the margins of girlhood and womanhood, “the shōjo
seems to signify the girl who never grows up”. She “represents the young girl just old
enough to possess sexual feelings but innocent enough to be blissfully unaware of

1 Matthew Burdelski and Koji Mitsuhashi, “She thinks you’re kawaii,” Language in Society 39, no. 1
(2010): 68.
2 Brian McVeigh, “Commodifying affection, authority and gender in the everyday objects of Japan,”
Journal of Material Culture 1, no. 3 (1996): 301-2.
3 Theresa Winge, “Undressing and Dressing Loli,” Mechademia 3 (2008): 48.
them”4. It is this kind of sexuality which women who adopt kawaii aesthetics seem to be
trying to replicate.

As I have already stated, kawaii is a gendered concept; “psycholinguistic

interviews have suggested that preschool girls (ages three to six) are much more likely
than boys…to describe themselves as kawaii, suggesting that kawaii is an important
aspect of gender identity.”5 Typical feminine behaviours, not only in Japan but
(arguably) universally, relate to softness, weakness, dependence and happiness, all of
which are embodied in the kind of cute aesthetic that kawaii represents. These things
have been associated with typical femininity because of the patriarchal nature of
society, going back to hunter-gatherer times, in which men have been the strong
providers and women have been the weak child-bearers. Indeed, as McVeigh points out:
“cuteness points to an association between ‘baby-ishness’ and motherhood. More
concretely, cute objects are attractive to women because they link an affinity for babies
and being a good mother to children.”6 And yet, kawaii is a different form of idealised
femininity from ryōsai kenbo (good wife, wise mother), and is typically associated with
young, single females. It is an ideal that maintains a sense of sexual innocence,
revolving around the shōjo who displays a socially and sexually liminal state. Power
relations are implicit in the word kawaii because the feeling of wanting to protect
something implies an unequal relationship between a depended-on and a dependent. In
Japan, “cuteness sweetens social relations”7 and allows the cute thing to be desired
through an expression of weakness, inviting a protector; women who display kawaii
thus become “beings that for many men need to be ‘protected, cuddled, held,’ and
‘controlled’”.8 Government advertising also enforces the ideal of kawaii. The Japanese
government uses kawaii aesthetics for all manner of things (from informative or
warning signs, to advertisements for the Self Defence Force) which show girls in the
typical kawaii style: with “features of an infant, such as a wide forehead, small chin, big
eyes, low nose, small lips, and white skin”.9 Constantly showing these images enforces
the idea of their normality and, thus, their desirability.

One way kawaii can be seen to disempower women is through sexual

objectification. Young girls displaying kawaii characteristics are an extremely common
object of sexual desire in a vast range of anime and manga. Sexual transformation is
one such example, whereby the character “may literally sprout new sexual body parts
(e.g. breasts, penises, curves) turning them into sexual bodies… while simultaneously
sprouting other metonymical features – bells, ears, tails, wings”10 which are typically

4 Susan Napier, “Vampires, Psychic Girls, Flying Women and Sailor Scouts: Four Faces of the young
female in Japanese popular culture.” In The Worlds of Japanese Popular Culture: Gender, Shifting
Boundaries and Global Cultures, ed. Dolores P. Martinez (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1998), 94.
5 Burdelski and Mitsuhashi, “She thinks you’re kawaii,” 68.
6 McVeigh, “Commodifying affection,” 305.
7 Ibid., 296.
8 Ibid.
9 Ibid.
10 Sharon Kinsella, “Minstrelized girls: male performers of Japan's Lolita complex,”
Japan Forum 18, no. 1 (2006): 75.
associated with kawaii, thus creating an ‘ideal’ female; one that is both sexualised and
innocent. Pornography has also become much more kawaii-oreinted: “wholesome and
innocent schoolgirls in sailor suits…have appeared in novels, erotic manga,
illustrations, photo magazines, and videos, and on internet sites.”11 Kinsella has linked
this sexualisation of fictional kawaii girls to objectification of real ones: “Between 1995
and 1998 real schoolgirls in uniform became a perpetual presence on national
television…They were frequently filmed from the bottom up, with the camera focused
mainly on their legs and skirts.”12 Sailor Moon is a similar example from anime who is
“a sex icon as well as a superhero, one who feeds and is fed by a general trend in Japan
toward the infantilization of female sex objects”.13 When transformed into her super-
hero state she wears a “miniskirt outfit” which, combined with “her leggy, slender
body” and “long, flowing blond hair”, makes her clearly sexually desirable from a male
perspective.14 This kind of sexualisation undermines the power and strength Sailor
Moon otherwise possesses. This is especially true when compared to male super-hero
characters, who are not sexualised in such a way, implying that females are only
allowed to be strong when they are also appealing to the male gaze, thus creating a
gender hierarchy.

The sexualisation of kawaii is also heavily linked to commercialisation. This is

because of the male audience of otaku (“who form both the audience for Lolita complex
culture and a large secondary audience for manga, animation, and pop-idols ostensibly
produced for children”15) whose feeling of moe (desire/attraction) towards the shōjo
characters prompts them to continue consumption of these cultural products and to buy
character merchandise, such as figurines. Of course, sex is a tool that helps sell a
number of cultural commodities. For example, AKB48’s music video ‘Heavy Rotation’
contains a number of kawaii elements – such as teddy bears, heart-shaped pillows,
pastel colours, flowers, and cat ears – mixed with sexual elements – such as girls in their
underwear, girls wearing corsets, girls kissing each other (though somewhat demurely),
and girls in a bath together; clear sexual objectification. Perhaps, however, we could
argue that the use of sex appeal to maximise popularity gives the members of AKB48
more power, whereby kawaii becomes a tool through which to manipulate males, since
“objects of desire have power”.16 However, can we say that this is true power? If it is
necessary for women to make themselves into an objectified commodity in order to
have power or be successful, surely that shows women as having a highly unequal
position in society. In the fight for women to gain equality with men, any sexualisation
of power is problematic because it plays into the established gender hierarchy, in which
males are the powerful onlookers and females are the objectified thing performing the
male definition of desirability. “In this model of social power, women are offered the

11 Sharon Kinsella, “What’s Behind the Fetishism of Japanese School Uniforms?” Fashion Theory: The
Journal of Dress, Body & Culture 6, no. 2 (2002): 219.
12 Ibid., 227.
13 Anne Allison, “Sailor Moon: Japanese Superheroes for Global Girls.” In Japan Pop! Inside the World
of Japanese Popular Culture, ed. Timothy J. Craig (New York: M. E. Sharpe, Inc., 2000), 269.
14 Ibid.
15 Kinsella “Fetishism of Japanese School Uniforms,” 225.
16 Winge, “Undressing and Dressing Loli,” 60.
promise of autonomy by voluntarily objectifying themselves and actively choosing to
employ their capacities in the pursuit of a feminine appearance and a sexualised
image.”17 Just like with Sailor Moon, the sexualisation of AKB48 undermines the
power or influence they may have, because it objectifies them for the male gaze and so
places them in a gender hierarchy. Furthermore, the blend of kawaii and sexual
elements blurs the boundary between the two, causing the female audience to equate
kawaii with sexual desirability and thus reinforces the feminine ideal.

On the other hand, however, kawaii can be seen as a form of alternative

expression in a somewhat oppressive society. For one thing, it is an alternative to the
salaryman/ryōsai kenbo gender ideals which have dominated Japanese society since the
post-war ‘Miracle Economy’. These gender ideals reflect traditional notions of
masculinity and femininity, promoting men as workers whose whole lives revolve
around the company, and women as housewives and mothers. It is just these kinds of
traditional ideals that feminists have fought against because it prevents women from
having economic independence, among other things. Indeed, the fact that Japanese
women have been turning away from these ideals in favour of pursuing careers is
reflected in the declining marriage and birth rates. Kawaii offers an alternative form of
femininity, one that is centred around youthfulness, perhaps reflecting a desire to
remain young and so avoid shouldering the burdens of adulthood, such as those
represented by the ‘good wife, wise mother’ ideal.18 In this respect, the adoption of
kawaii aesthetics can be seen as both rebellion and escapism. Japanese society is
relatively collectivist and, as such, there can be huge social pressure to conform to
normative standards of success, such as success in academia, career, marriage and child-
rearing. This huge pressure to be successful can have negative psychological impacts,
resulting in things like hikkikomori (withdrawing from society) and suicide. Kawaii is
often expressed through fantasy, due to its use in anime, manga and other forms of
cultural entertainment, and thus it provides a means of escape from the real world. In
real life usage as well, Kawaii can be an escape from normality. Its association with
shōjo makes it a kind of liminal identity, removing the sense of seriousness or
responsibility that comes with contemporary Japanese life, especially because it entails
a happy attitude which makes both performer and onlooker feel good. In this vein, we
can see kawaii as linked to the “linguistic staple of Japanese social life” that is akarui
(cheerfulness).19 Cheerfulness is a behavioural characteristic necessary for the
performer to be considered ‘kawaii’ and it is also the feeling aroused when one
witnesses ‘cuteness’. The same feeling of child-like joy one experiences when looking
at a cute animal is the kind of feeling those who perform kawaii, presumably, identify
with and intend to inspire. From this perspective, kawaii could be viewed as a genuine
identification with that joyful feeling, and the expression of this in clothing and
behaviour as giving females a way to actively influence their surroundings.

17 Joel Gwynne, “Japan, postfeminism and the consumption of sexual(ised) schoolgirls in male-authored
contemporary manga,” Feminist Theory 14, no. 3 (2013): 336.
18 Winge, “Undressing and Dressing Loli,” 59.
19 McVeigh, “Commodifying affection,” 308.
 Moving into the realm of sub-culture, excessive adoption of the kawaii aesthetic
can be seen as a rebellion from the traditional gender ideals which constitute a
normative lifestyle. One example is Lolita fashion, in particular the Ama Roriita (Sweet
Lolita) style. Winge describes Lolitas as “young women and men who dress as
anachronistic visual representations of Victorian-era dolls”,20 who “modestly conceals
her mature body beneath ornately elaborate garments” and “communicates kawaii
characteristics – hypercute and hyperfeminine – with her dress, poses and
mannerisms”.21 The choice to dress and behave in the Lolita style is a clear
identification with a sub-cultural community which is outside the norm. It thus becomes
rebellious because it shows an alternative to the status quo and shows women as having
the power to decide their own identities; “presenting the Lolita aesthetic provides
subculture members with a way to visually and socially express their dissatisfaction
with the dominant culture”.22 So, even though Lolita fashion is heavily connected to a
sense of childishness and innocence, it is difficult to say that it encourages
submissiveness in women. It also creates a sense of community based on shared identity
while also being able to “visually express their individuality”.23

However, despite its positive intention, behaviour associated with kawaii may
unintentionally support the status quo. Because the enactor of kawaii adopts a child-like
behaviour and appearance, her sexual attractiveness becomes located in her sense of
innocence. This places the male onlooker in a position of experience and, therefore,
authority. The woman is sexy without being fully sexualised, again linking to the
sexually liminal state of the shōjo, which can make it seem as if her sexuality is not her
own – since she does not display full awareness or control over it – but belongs, instead,
to the male onlooker. It is these kinds of ideas which may be subconsciously
internalised by both females and males alike when they encounter kawaii aesthetics.
This is problematic because it could encourage a kind of controlled female sexuality
which is “less threatening to men”24 and puts females in a subordinate position. Of
course, however, we cannot say whether or to what extent such internalisation takes
place. Indeed, there could be nothing more behind kawaii than the universal desire to
both protect and be protected, and to be romantically desired.

When assessing whether or not kawaii aesthetics are disempowering to women, it

can be easy to say that it is the intention that makes all the difference. After all, there is
surely a huge difference between someone who feels pressured to adopt kawaii
behaviours just to fit in and be considered attractive, and someone who truly identifies
with kawaii and adopts those behaviours as a form of escape from the dominant culture.
However, we must remember that kawaii is heavily pervasive and deeply entrenched in
Japanese society: “As a child is socialized, she or he is bombarded through the senses
with the sights and sounds of cuteness embedded in articles of everyday use and
consumption. At the unconscious level, sentiments relating to cuteness establish

20 Winge, “Undressing and Dressing Loli,” 47.

21 Ibid., 50.
22 Ibid., 58.
23 Ibid.
24 McVeigh, “Commodifying affection,” 303.
symbolic associations and connections with more abstract values…Communicated
through commercialization and commodification, cute things become objectified
sentiment, commenting on and supporting a normative discourse about gender
definitions.”25 When something has become so fundamental, it is very difficult to
separate intention from internalisation. And, even when someone considers themselves
to be rebelling, the effect it may have on society at large may be one of encouraging
female submissiveness because, as I have already suggested, the behaviour that goes
along with the kawaii aesthetic may unintentionally encourage the gender status-quo.

A further complication of the idea of free choice and identification is adaptive

preferences. As Walker explains: “A wide variety of causal mechanisms can determine
the content of our preferences. For example, sometimes our preferences are formed in
response to the possibilities we perceive: we come to want what seems inevitable, or not
to want what we think impossible. Or sometimes a skewed presentation of the merits of
alternatives shapes our preferences, by preventing us from entertaining certain options
seriously. We might say, then, that some of our preferences are ‘adaptive’ to our
circumstances.”26 It is his suggestion that it is because of adaptive preferences that
people come to want what is generally expected of them, for example women want to
become wives and mothers. In relation to kawaii, because it is so pervasive, so widely
used and displayed in Japan, that it becomes a feminine ideal. This then translates into
an adaptive preference for that ideal, since desiring it would presumably make life
easier for the individual in question. Internalised values can thus become standards of
normality. From this perspective, it is very difficult to determine the effect of kawaii
aesthetics, since it could appear to be a free choice which empowers females when it is
actually an adaptive preference based on subordination, or vice versa. The sentiment
behind the sexual objectification and commoditisation of kawaii aesthetics would seem
to be very different from the sentiment behind Lolita fashion and individuals adopting
kawaii as an escape from the burdens of society. And yet, they are clearly
interconnected. It would seem wrong to conclude that kawaii aesthetics are entirely
disempowering to women, since we have seen clear examples which negate this.
However, there are obvious problems with kawaii in terms of female equality, made
more problematic by the fact that it is very difficult to assess internalisation and
adaptive preferences, meaning potential negative effects may go unseen.

We have seen how complicated kawaii is because of its many facets, its
expression in a variety of different ways, multitudes of intention behind it, and the
extreme pervasiveness of kawaii aesthetics, combined with an inability to empirically
assess internalisation. On the one hand, to dismiss all aspects of kawaii as sexist would
be to disregard the genuine feelings of identification and joy that participants have.
However, on the other hand, there are aspects of kawaii which support a gender
hierarchy and encourage a sense of disempowerment in women, if not on a conscious
level, then perhaps on a subconscious one.

25Ibid., 309.
26John Walker, “Liberalism, consent and the problem of adaptive preferences,” Social Theory and
Practice 21, no. 3 (1995): 457.
 By Erin O’Flaherty.

Bibliography

Allison, Anne. "Sailor Moon: Japanese Superheroes for Global Girls." In Japan Pop!
Inside the World of Japanese Popular Culture, edited by Timothy J. Craig, 259-278.
New York: M. E. Sharpe, Inc., 2000.

Burdelski, Matthew, and Koji Mitsuhashi. "She thinks you're kawaii." Language in
Society 39, no. 1 (2010): 65-93.

Gwynne, Joel. "Japan, postfeminism and the consumption of sexual(ised) schoolgirls in

male-authored contemporary manga." Feminist Theory 14, no. 3 (2013): 325-343.

Kinsella, Sharon. "Minstrelized girls: male performers of Japan's Lolita Complex."

Japan Forum 18, no. 1 (2006): 65-87.
---------- "What's Behind the Fetishism of Japanese School Uniforms?" Fashion Theory:
The Journal of Dress, Body & Culture 6, no. 2 (2002): 215-237.

McVeigh, Brian. "Commodifying affection, authority and gender in the everyday

objects of Japan." Journal of Material Culture 1, no. 3 (1996): 291-312.

Napier, Susan. "Vampires, Psychic Girls, Flying Women and Sailor Scouts: Four Faces
of the young female in Japanese popular culture." In The Worlds of Japanese Popular
Culture: Gender, Shifting Boundaries and Global Cultures, edited by Dolores P.
Martinez, 91-109. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998.

Walker, John. "Liberalism, consent and the problem of adaptive preferences." Social
Theory and Practice 21, no. 3 (1995): 457.

Winge, Theresa. "Undressing and Dressing Loli." Mechademia 3 (2008): 47-63.