Queer Eye for the Japanese Guy?
Commodified Male Sexuality in a Tokyo Host Club
Akiko Takeyama
บทคัดย่อในงานการประชุมวิชาการConsuming Sexในการประชุมนานาชาติ “เพศวิถี เพศภาวะ และสิทธิในเอเชีย: การประชุมนานาชาติครั้งแรกว่าด้วยเรื่องเควียร์ศึกษา” (Sexualities, Genders, and Rights in Asia, 1st International Conference of Asian Queer Studies) จัดโดยโครงการจัดตั้งสำนักงานสิทธิมนุษยชนศึกษาและพัฒนาสังคม มหาวิทยาลัยมหิดล และเครือข่ายเควียร์แห่งภาคพื้นเอเชียแปซิฟิก ระหว่างวันที่ 7-9 กรกฎาคม 2548 ณ โรงแรมแอมบาสเดอร์ กรุงเทพมหานคร
The new American TV show, Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, has highlighted the aestheticization of heterosexual men by queer men. The so-called ‘metrosexual’ phenomenon points to straight men who spend an inordinate amount of time and money on beautifying their appearance and who are ‘willing to embrace their feminine side.’ However, this is nothing new in Japan. Straight men have been beautifying themselves and embracing, even flaunting, their feminine side since the late 1980s. This phenomenon is particularly evident in Tokyo’s host clubs where young Japanese men ‘host’ female customers. These clubs are lavish, female-friendly spaces where male hosts invest heavily in their appearance, using slim bodies, trendy hairstyles and expensive designer suits to attract female customers. It is also a phenomenon that occurs entirely independently of gay influence. This paper demonstrates how the rapidly expanding market for men’s fashion and aesthetics, as well as the growth of urban consumer space such as host clubs, have allowed for a freer expression of men’s beauty and an increase in social tolerance for men’s ‘feminine’ side. By exploring male beautification practices in the context of Japanese host clubs, it also examines the parameters of apparently transgressive gender formations. Just as critics of the meterosexual trend in the US have argued that the gay men in Queer Eye are nothing more than handmaidens for heteronormativity, I will argue that Japanese hosts, practices ultimately reinscribe even as the they disrupt prevailing heteronormative notions of beauty and romance.
