8.08.2010

The Influence of Women's Magazines

There are many types of women's magazines especially fashion ones. Fashion magazines includes not only clothes, make-up and accessories, but also diet, love, and even advertisements of recruit and schooling. Now, Japanese fashion magazines are one of key items for women to absorb a lot of information of daily life.
Then, I have one thing I always wander its meaning of existence. Most of all magazines always tell us how to attract men called "Mote"in Japanese. They show mote-coordinate, mote-colors, mote-makeup, mote-actions and so on. It is like brainwashing for readers to say "if you follow this mote-points, you must become attractive enough to fascinate tons of men." Once the mote-items are introduced in magazines, numbers of women rush to them, and many apparel stores sell that kind of clothes. Therefore, most of girls are unfortunately in similar fashion at that time. This time, I would like to think about where this "mote" comes from and why most women are eager to be "mote-onna".
"Mote" is used as a noun and come from an verb "moteru" which means to catch a lot of attention from others especially opposite sex. Therefore, nowadays many modern Japanese women try hard to be attractive in contrast to Edo or Meiji period. Serching "mote" in Google, there are 12.9 million sites on the web, as you can see, Japan has been already eroded by mote.
This mote-methods mostly spread out from Japanese women's fashion magazines.  JJ and CanCam are  two top sales of major women fashion magazines, and their target age is around 20 to 25. In this generation, many women have a lot of opportunities to meet various men in any time such as universities, part-time jobs or workplaces. They start to think hard to get a better and better boyfriends who are ideal men for them such as gentle, handsome, rich, smart and so on. Nobody is sure whether it is correct or not, but at that time, some women suggest great men must have their own standards which are very high level and have special girlfriend whose appearances and characters are enough to men. In order to get good boyfriends, women also blush up themselves to be lovely enough to be able to accompany with boyfriends. Magazines such as 2 top sales called CanCam, JJ may aim to this points, they show how to attract men with introducing fashion items, makeups, actions and manners.
Writing this article, I think even if some people say "I blush up myself for me.", it finally connects boyfriends or husbands.  When seeing a magazine focusing on "mote-coordinate", I was told as if  women must seek their beauty to get high-leveled men. Also as I assume women focus on their boyfriends spec rather than their characters, I depress women still have to be parasitic to men who have sufficient economic and social levels.  I always feel very confused about a girl who wears all mote-clothes has really chosen her favorite items by her own intention. 
How do you feel this issue? What do you think about mote-control against women?

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