Pleasure Principled

Revealingly Articulate Idol Worship

When I first got into Hello! Project, I was very oblivious to the fandom. In my naïve little mind, the only fans of these hot, miniskirt-wearing little girls were people like me: female teenagers who are in it because they enjoy learning the dances and can relate to the members in some way or other. You could probably imagine my shock when, with the help of my friend Julia, I stumbled upon a little chatroom known as wotachat. There I learned that my general age range, and even gender, were not the only fans of Hello! Project.

Way back then, I wasn’t exactly horrified by the idea of older men liking the same stuff I do. It’s okay to like something, right? However, I was more shocked by the fact that men the same age as my own father went to concerts and screamed for tiny little Mai Hagiwara. That put horrible mental images of my dad in a too-tight bright pink t-shirt waving around a fan with Mai’s face on it. I found it rather hard to look at my idols in the same light as before, especially after I found out that they actually cater to these kinds of fans.

I used to think it was amazing that people as young as Mai could get up on stage and sing for thousands of people and sing and dance without getting phased by anything around them. And so, I decided that Mai was my favourite member of C-ute because she was the youngest by far and was still almost as good of a performer than everyone else in the group. While lurking the Hello! Online forums, I discovered that an older man was a huge fan of Mai and I thought “Ew, gross, he’s so old and yet he likes the youngest member. What a pedo.” I didn’t consider that he might like her for the same reasons I do.

A problem I still sort of have now is Hey! Say! JUMP, or more specifically, Hey! Say! 7. The members of HS7 are all under the age of 16 and the best kind of pedo bait. I don’t really agree with this, which is kind of hypocritical of me considering I don’t mind that old men like C-ute and Berryz. The youngest member of HS7 is around the same age as Mai, and I won’t even look at him let alone consider being his fan, because of the huge age difference. If I thought it was absolutely disgusting that girls my age liked the other, 15-year-old members of the group, I wasn’t even going to consider liking Ryotaro, the 13 year old.

U-15 gravure is in the middle for me. I think that the only reason I frowned on it before was that I didn’t look like that and therefore couldn’t do it too, but now that I think about it, I would love to pose in bikinis if I had the body and the face for it. If you have a nice body, why not flaunt it? I don’t think it’s slutty at all. I think its going too far when 15 year olds are doing actual porn, but I see nothing wrong with posing in bikinis.

So ultimately, I think I’m way more open to the idea of older men now. And in fact, I think I prefer that kind of fandom over the fan girls of Johnny’s or people who think they’re all cool because they listen to underground groups and don’t like ‘idols’.