By Nadine Kam

Emiri Miyasaka’s take on the national costume of Japan, presented last week in Tokyo.

Another pageant, another beauty queen; YAWN!

But Miss Japan Universe 2009 Emiri Miyasaka has stirred up more interest than usual in the Miss Universe 2009 pageant coming up Aug. 23 in the Bahamas, thanks to her national costume that is one part kimono (the top half) and one part Lolita (bottom half).

You can read a little bit more about it on VoyForums, the Philippine Pageant message board. Critics call the costume slutty and say the costume shows disrespect for the kimono.

But then, if you check out the contestant roster at www.missuniverse.com, you’ll see that Emiri is way down in the polls, so she’ll need attention if she wants to bring the crown back to Japan again.

The garter belt, stocking and panties are risque for the pageant, but it’s not as if we haven’t already seen similar in prime time during those Victoria Secret runway shows, and it’s not as if the Miss Universe pageant makes any pretense at scholarship and intellect.

The thing that prevents it from being 100 percent slutty is the cleverness in showing that duality in Japanese culture, the mix of conservatism and appetite for sexual content in media. Hmm, that sounds a lot like the U.S. puritan/porn ethos, which confuses the heck out of conservatives. Which is why we uncover so many stories of hypocrites preaching family values while breaking any and all vows they claim to uphold. That is a lot more offensive than a stage costume.

This entry was posted on Monday, July 27th, 2009 at 2:52 pm and is filed under International fashion, media, Entertainment, Too much excitement. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.