One-Minute Beauty

September 8th, 2009 | 0 Comments | as obects, Buddhism, men's interest in, Religion, Women |

Three beautiful women

A few days ago I accidentally found the Beautiful Women Clock (美人時計： bijin-tokei). The site does not indicate what its objective is or why it was created. The only thing one knows is that every minute a different woman gives you the time.

The site belongs to a Public Relations firm. I sent them an e-mail asking what their goal is, but they replied with a generic message indicating they had received my message and that they might reply via e-mail.

Curiosity drove me to do some searching, but all I have been able to find, as of this writing, is that the Beautiful Women’s Clock is a joint project among several artists who supposedly want highlight the beauty of ordinary Japanese people. It remains to be seen if this is true; whenever I check the clock, I always see young women whose ages range between 18 and 28 years. Allegedly, there will also be a site that will highlight the handsomeness of ordinary men.

Regardless of whether the objective truly is to just appreciate the beauty of ordinary Japanese, I find this to be a very interesting idea, especially because large media conglomerates nowadays promote a global standardization of beauty that decidedly follows western ideals.

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I harbor no doubts that this is so for (mainly) two reasons. First, a few months ago I read an interesting report on the recent successes of Japanese contestants in the Miss Universe pageant, as evidenced by the 2007 winner and the previous year’s first runner-up. According to the article, for a few years work has been ongoing to gain domestic prestige for Miss Universe Japan. In addition, the contest searches for women who are not only tall, but also of an appearance that would appeal to the West. That may be why the Japanese media, besides mentioning the 2007 win, paid little attention to the outcome of the event. As a side note, I still recall vividly how several Japanese friends, both male and female, told me at the time that they did not think the Miss Universe winner was especially pretty or interesting.

The second reason I owe to a friend who works in company that deals with the cosmetic and pharmaceutical sectors. This person told me, not long ago, that one of his struggles was to convince Japanese women that bigger breasts are better because women with a larger bosom are more beautiful and attractive. In this country, my friend has run into to obstacles. One of them (at least according to my friend), is the “god-damned legacy of Buddhism”, which discourages Japanese from having surgeries that are not absolutely essential. The other obstacle is harder to overcome. Because most Japanese women are small-breasted, the ones that are flat chested generally do not have any complexes about their “condition” since Japanese society still does not consider it as something that makes women unattractive.

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Three beautiful women

Given the difficulty in convincing Japanese women to change their notions of beauty, my friend’s company and others are working on other fronts as well. The most important is perhaps convincing men that large-breasted women are not only better looking, but also hotter in bed. A corollary to this is that man who has by his side or seduces a buxom beauty is more of a man. It goes without saying that the idea is that if a big change in men’s taste is effected, then women will spend significant amounts of money in implants and related artifices. According to my friend, Japan is an embarrassing market in his business area because the sale of implants is simply laughable if you account for the purchasing power of Japanese women.

We live in a world in which too many women are afflicted with anorexia and bulimia. Because my friend has three small daughters, I asked him if he could sleep well a night and if he ever worried that any or all of his girls, upon becoming teenagers, would join what sometimes seems to be an ever larger number of young females who suffer from those ailments and others due to the pressure to have perfect bodies. My friend shrugged his shoulders and answered that parents are responsible for raising children who can survive in world that is not only tough, but sometimes cruel as well.

In view of the foregoing, and despite the fact that still I do not know the real motive behind the Beautiful Women Clock, today and for the time being, I applaud that site for highlighting the beauty of ordinary women. Rather than referring to ordinary women, the site administrator’s should perhaps address them as natural women.