"Gal was always femenist"- a brief look

Hey welcome back

So today we're tackling some TikTok missinfo I see sticking still, and that's the notion that gal was rebelling against JP beauty standards, and by extension, that the gal is a feminist movement. Sorry if this ends up not as segmented as normal. This is a very deep topic, so like yk. Also, like fair warning, this entry will have magazine scans and talk about sexual topics, nothing you wouldn't see in Gyaru magazines, but like maybe save this one for off the bus lol. And obviously I am happy to see proof to the contrary throughout this post, and this is all to my best Gaijin none Jp speakings unbderstanding,  please do not cite this as 100% the most accurate.

Trigger warnings for topics to do with weight, weight loss, rape, sexual assault and pedophilia.

So what's wrong with that?

Well, the truth is it's not entirely true (at least in my understanding), I can see why people can interpret Gal like this, hell, I used to, but to me at least it feels like a very surface-level understanding of gal that ignores a lot of things to work. now dont get me wrong as i said i can see why its seen like that esspecialy through the lense of western politics, kuro styles went against the beauty standard of paleness in jp and a lot of what gal does does break social norms (esspecially for woman) and i can ackgnolage that some parts of gal can deffenetly be seen through the lense of (western) femmenisim and as rebbeeling against beauty standards and i can first hand ackgnolage the freedom (if you will) that gal gives you and how good it feels to be unapolegetically yourself which is what gal is about but even with that we have to remember we view gal through a western lense thats very diffrent to how gal was viewed in JP.

So, how is Gal not feminist?

Well, first we have to acknowledge that feminism in JP is different to that of the West and very much so, but I will leave that topic to either locals or those with a degree to back them, coz well im not qualified here but will leave y'all off with the Wikipedia article to start y'all off in the understanding of basics. But what I can speak on is gal. Now, as much as these days, especially in the West, gal is a bit of a girls' girl subculture that's not always been the case. In the west, we had things like gyaru secrets and lolcow threads, but this isn't even truly a western phenomenon. Many things were happening among JP gals that would directly ruin any claims of feminism. The biggest being quite simply a majority of gals were dressing for the male gaze, in most magazines you will read, you'll always find something to do with dating and how to be more attractive to men, hell, even Egg started off as a porn magazine. I mean, hell, take a look at the scan below (sorry for the translation quality, all I have is Google Translate)

Egg Magazine vol. 10 circa 1997

Now, if you take a second to read what you can, you'll notice just how egg spoke about its models early on, hell, even the winning prize being a drink that makes you lose weight? Does that seem very feminist? Now I know 1997 is the beginning of egg and all, but I need y'all to know this has been a thing since day one. 

Let's look at a modern issue of egg, vol. 213 from 2014, to see how egg might have improved. Let's start with some ads that were run in this issue, starting with:

Oh, look, a diet ad, a staple of pretty much every magazine I've ever read for gal and for the sake of my own curiosity, I figured out the BMI for each of these girls (disclaimer about BMI not being all that accurate) coz im sure y'all will see the problem very quickly:

Ayaha: underweight by 3.2kg

Risa: underweight by 5.8kg

Tomomi: under by 4.3kg

Shiori: under by 0.9kg (IN 2 WEEKS)

Now, why am I putting this here? Simple gal magazines (and wider culture within Asia) genuinely promote being underweight for women, and gals also stuck to this and very much took these dietary supplements to lose weight. I should mention that a safe rate of weight loss is about 0.5-1Kg a week, so losing 8.5kg in 2 weeks is very telling about this medication if you ask me. 

On another very feminist page, we have a whole section about how men only want big boobs (but obviously not too big and they can never sag), including a lovely ad for some boob enhancement pills. And of course:

Even more talk about what men want (so shape up, girls) coz we all know that we should put all our worth on how men see us and our bodies, right? This is all to continue to say that there hasn't been a time really where gal magazines weren't rooted a little bit, at least in misogyny (like general JP culture, but again, that topic is too big to handle in this post), this is the info being fed directly to the of the time gals who were, in large part teenagers, why do we think a lot of girls in JP (and by extent Jfashion communities) have struggled with EDs?

Oh, and of course, to top it off, we get an ad for plastic surgery, which, mind you, Im not even against (nor girls being sexy if they want, mind you), Im just simply trying to show y'all with whatever primary sources I have that Gal wasn't really as feminist as we like to think it is. And it's not only in egg, but this is pretty much every magazine

Soul Sister vol.14 circa 2013

Popteen circa 2007

Ranzuki circa. 2009

Ageha circa. 2008

And so on, any magazine you read will have the same things in it: diet pills, plastic surgery, how to appeal to men, how to grow your boobs, what men think of xyz. These are honestly just examples I found from a quick look through what I'd consider the biggest magazines in the gal space, at random, mind you, I didn't particularly go searching. Well, im missing men's egg, but like men's egg has actual porn in it, like im not joking.

Men's Egg vol.110 circa.2008

I hope y'all enjoyed my censor job lmao (Google helped a little bit), but this is the average men's egg issue, once again egg started as a pornj mag and men's egg continued that mission statement (as far as im aware) to its death. And well with what we're seeing with New egg company..... but I hope this showed y'all that the magazines that gals worship were never feminist (which leads to the fact that the readers weren't either, demographics and the like). But magazines are magazines, what about actual people, you ask? Well...

Gal culture in it's heyday

So obviously magazines aren't real life, they post models and edited pictures, the best bits if you will, so what about normal gals? Well, it's not like they were off much better on the feminism scale. Compensated dating (basically prostitution) was common among the teenage gals who would often sleep with older men for money or brand, problematic age gap relationships were common and even seen in magazines, such as in this scan:

Soul Sister vol. 9 circa. 2013

Whilst at first glance all seems fine if you look at the couple in the top right, it all starts falling apart when you notice the ages being 21 for the man and 16 for the girl, and despite this, they were already talking about getting married 3 months into the relationship. Many gals had no other option but to be sex workers, and many gals were homeless. Not every gal was a black diamond member, not every gal had it good, hell speaking of B Dia, there were even rumours (on whose validity I will not comment) of girls sleeping their way into B Dia and sleeping their way into staying in it. many times where we see the most extreme of tans or hair, it's coz girls were trying to be better than one another, it want very girls girl back then. not to mention the numerous girls that did get raped and saed, coz despite what tiktok offencively will tell you, gal was never meant to be ugly and especially never meant to prevent rape. 

this maybe a bit of a tangent, but I want this to be included here, so please let me have my minuite but if you really are one of the people who believe in the idea that (ya)manba was ugly to prevent rape i want you to take a second and really think about that, why? why in your head, do you think only pretty people get raped? Why is rape so exclusive in your mind? I ask all this as a victim of Child sexual abuse. I survived getting raped as a kid, and with whatever power to talk on this gives me i want you, dear reader, to know how disgusting this sentiment is; it really is offensive. Rape has nothing to do with anything but the rapist wanting power over another person; how a victim looks, dresses, speaks, or anything really has nothing to do with rape. If people have the power to rape children, animals, their spouses, family, strangers, what makes you think some weird makeup would prevent that? why would someone looking "ugly" precvent rape, is it not rape if someone is ugly? as much as i know this came from a good place originaly i cant help to ponder this once in a while and just how much this boils down to how a rapist would think, rape culture is real to this day esspecially in japan, why would we wanna play into that? Why do we wanna pass on something that at the end of the day boils down to a rape appologist victim blaming lie? Why do we wanna invalidate victims just coz we wanna say "ugly people can't get raped, theyre too ugly to be raped" and by extension "well they should be happy they got raped its not like their ugly ass would get it otherwise so it wasn't really rape". 

Maybe im being a bit extreme there, but it's something that's been bothering me for a long, long while, esspecially when gal at the end of the day was always about the male gaze back then, girls dressed for men and to get the attention of men for the most part, they were taking inspo from celebreties from the west to be trendy just like any other person is now and will be for a long time yet. Gal has never really been femenist but at the same time, anything started mostly by women and for women will have feminist notes to it. I don't blame anyone for reading feminism into gal esspecially at first, and especially with the amount of misinformation out there, but when you look into gal even a little deeper, the idea that gal was always some amazing feminist thing falls apart really quickly. I love for us to take the good things about gal forward, I love seeing the confidence it gives people, I love seeing gal become a girls girl subculture and I love how much feminisim is coming into gal but with all that we cant forget our roots and we cant dissmiss the bad and forget it for "Those who cannot remember the past are condemmed to repeat it" -George Santayana, 1905. 

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With thanks to Gal Revo for the Scans and Amyh for Blog Deco