Japan's Cinderella Motif: Beauty Industry and Mass Culture ...

400 Laura Miller
winners from among salon patrons who have lost weight over a period of four
months. Slim Beauty House also awards overseas trips and cash to the winners. It
also holds the ‘‘Slim King Contest’’ for men.
The use of Cinderella in beauty advertisements is quite common. Consider the
Cinderella Beauty Cupping apparatus, a device used to achieve weight loss. 8 One may
also buy a breast enhancement product named Pueraria Breast Gel Cinderella Body,
which promises to increase bust size in a matter of months. 9 Both of these items index
the meanings of beautification and change. One magazine featured an article entitled
‘‘I want to become a princess!’, which instructs readers on how, with the right dresses,
hair, make-up and sparkly accessories, they are able to instantly change into a ‘‘special
Cinderella’’, even at the eleventh hour (Popteen, 2003). Recently, the Utsunomiya
Takeuchi Clinic began to offer the Cinderella Metamorphosis Symposium website. 10
Their website carries the banner ‘‘I want to be even more beautiful than before!’’
Webpages feature both Miss and Mrs Cinderella, and viewers may click on Cinderella
photos and get before and after pictures. The fact that there is a ‘‘Mrs Cinderella’’
suggests that getting a man is not the primary motivation at work here. In one case the
Mrs Cinderella was a fifty-one year-old who had had eyelid surgery. There is even a
page for the Cinderella Boy who has cosmetic surgery. The guys claim ‘‘I want to
become an even cooler hot dude’’. Making oneself attractive to potential partners
should also be considered a possible motivation for individual consumers, but the
discourse used in advertising rarely makes this the central message.
Cinderella-style Romance
Of course, it must be noted that the Cinderella tale of finding romantic love is also
found in Japanese popular culture. The Japanese self-help literature in particular
eagerly embraces Cinderella as an icon who represents all sorts of psychological
wish-fulfilment fantasies, from landing a great marriage partner to exaltation of
victory over adversity. Kurokawa Ihoko (2006), a self-help author who calls herself
a ‘‘sensitivity analyst’’ writes books about how women may program an internal
Cinderella Brain that will allow them to become happy and beautiful, and get the
prince of their dreams. In some cases the linking of Cinderella with romance is
presented with a humorous twist (Figure 2). In a comic entitled The Trials of
Cinderella from the series OL shinkaron (Evolution of the Office Lady) by Akizuki
Risu (2000), a young woman muses about whether or not to marry an affluent
doctor. Instead of a future of promised storybook romance, however, her good
angel underscores the bright financial future by wearing Hermes, Cartier and
Chanel. 11 Marriage to Prince Charming is therefore only a strategy for getting access
to coveted brand goods.
The linking of Cinderella with romantic fantasy is also discussed by Wakakuwa
Midori, a gender studies professor and art historian who asked her female students
to write essays about what Cinderella meant to them. For many of the women, the
story of Cinderella represents the belief that one should seek one’s cherished desires
for the future. One student wrote that ‘‘I think it is a story about really holding onto
a dream’’ (Wakakuwa, 2003, p. 79). Although she also noted that many of the
students felt that one required a Prince Charming in order to be happy, this was
because they thought it was only through marriage that they could achieve the