Some hail shoujo manga as a liberating front in girls' and women's comics, but is this invasion a boon for young women... or a curse?
Traditionally, American comics have exploited female characters as spandex shrink-wrapped T and A to be posed for cheesecake wherever possible, their breasts thrust out proudly to accentuate a tiny, wasp-like waist. Anyone who remembers the good old X-Men of the '90s or the original Catwoman series (as drawn by Jim Balent) knows whereof I speak. Even the super-intelligent, super-strong Fairchild of my favorite series Gen13 had her personality undermined by her bouncy, orb-like breasts and impossible anatomy. (J. Scott Campbell, who drew Gen13 for the earlier part of the series's run, later went on to draw Danger Girl. His anatomical repertoire had by then expanded to include actual hips, so we can only assume that between series he actually got laid or managed to familiarize himself with the female body in some other fashion.)
Japanese comics, on the other hand, usually feature girls and women with (comparably) more realistic bodies. They have thoughts and emotions and powers and problems. They are written and drawn by women, rather than being the female handpuppets of a male creator. But, does this make them feminist role models for young women?
Remember that Japan is still considered "sexually backward" by most Western cultures (who are still sexually backward in their own ways, mind you). Most female Japanese college students drop out when they find a husband at school. In comics, heroines often aspire not to succeed at their dreams but rather to marry the man of their dreams. Many shoujo manga series end with a wedding.
Japanese comics actually portray women as weaker beings. For instance, X-Men's Rogue has always kicked butt, even in her porn-worthy costume. Sailor Moon, while being in a girls-only team and starring in her own series marketed almost exclusively to girls, always needs Tuxedo Mask to tell her when to use her powers. She has to be told by some guy who has very little powers of his own (he can throw a rose and make a speech)? She spins around naked for five minutes in each episode of the cartoon series to boot! (Although, here it must be noted that the Japanese, along with the British, do not have the same kind of stigma on nudity that Americans do.) How is a woman kicking butt in a porn-worthy costume worse than a girl in a miniskirt being told by a man to kick butt?
In Japanese comics, strong women are usually stereotyped as "butch" or "executive sharks." Pretty girls are often ditzy and helpless, relying on the support of their stronger friends or male love interests to buoy them through life. They get poor grades and often fail to study. They do not dream of becoming doctors or starting their own store or just making it on their own. They just want to be happy, and that happiness usually arrives in the form of a love interest.
Take Fruits Basket, one of the better shoujo manga out there. The female protagonist is, while cloyingly sweet and devoted, pretty helpless and dependent on the males and stronger females around her. She gets poor grades just like Sailor Moon and the protagonist of Fushigi Yugi, and perhaps worst of all, she tailors her interests to match those of the two most important boys in her life (something I see many young American women doing, which seems to stunt their development as actual people).
In Mars, the female protagonist, a victim of sexual abuse, relies on her (oddly) dependable (and fortunately rich) boyfriend to rescue her from her horrible family life. Oh, sure, she hits her abuser, but ultimately its her boyfriend who does the heavy fighting. And, let's not get into the appalling circumstances under which she first sleeps with her boyfriend. She does have a dream to go to art school, but the only way for it to come true is by marrying her (rich) boyfriend and being accepted into his family.
Is this the kind of message we want young, female comic readers to receive? "It's okay if you're not that good in school. Just get married as soon as you get out of high school and everything will be fine. Your man will take care of you." How often that is not the case in the harsh reality of America's "The Young and the Hopeless." This kind of propaganda is reminiscent of the Barbie Scare of the '80s, when mothers and fathers woke up to the fact that Barbie dolls were feeding their daughters such ideals as "Shopping is fun," and "Math is hard." Do we really want a country whose women are still stuck in forties-housewife-mode influencing our already troubled young women of tomorrow?
I think that the problem is that American comics do not provide the emotional content girls crave. That is why we love Japanese comics. Neither really provides a decent role model, and Japanese comics tend to reinforce sexist, negative stereotypes of girls and women, but at least the characters are three dimensional.
We cannot change the ideals of another country, especially when our own country is in a state of female identity crisis and celebration of raunch culture. We cannot stop girls from reading shoujo manga, nor should we. Japanese comics offer us the rare chance to view another culture different from our own. But, if we want girls to get "the right message," we have to send it to them ourselves. We have to make our own comics. We have to be the change we want to see in American comics and perhaps even in American culture.
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I live under a bridge.
