The Morality of Idolatry

[TotallyUncool]

I think that's a lot of it -- fans now are generally more sophisticated than the management companies give them credit for being.

[wotakubrandon]

If you trust them the way that you'd trust your parents, they will eventually betray you.

Just like real parents

[resop2]

1) The barf argument is ridiculous because zero teen girls are going to want to do that even if they become famous.

2) The idea that the attitude with H!P management is "Don't get caught" is even more ridiculous than the barf argument. Between the stalker/scandal magazine photographers and the wotas with phone cams one's chances of getting caught would be close to 100%.

3) Japan is a hierarchy-based society. Even by the time that one is 12 the idea that one is supposed to respect and emulate your senpai's is pretty ingrained. So, while it might seem silly for 20+ year old MM members to refrain from dating, if they were dating they would not have the moral authority to tell the 12 year old members not to date.

4) JE fangirl's rumors about Chinami and Jin to the contrary, if one of the early Junior High school members of H!P were to get knocked up that would kill H!P overnight.

5) A large percentage of the H!P live with their parents or at least one parent. The parents are obviously going to be told that if their girl goes out on dates with boys then the parents can kiss the paycheck goodbye.

6) Between school and endless touring, rehearsing, promoting, recording, etc are they really going to have time to date?

Now, obviously there have been exceptions to all of this, mostly documented in the Fanon or Canon thread. But, these exceptions are a small percentage of the total number of girls that have come through H!P.

[otaku_blue]

A shit load of recent Yuuka pictures surfaced online, of her at school and with friends.

Ffs just leave the girl alone.

[Zunu]

In the discussion of the "no boyfriends" rule, what would happen if you replaced the phrase "no boyfriends" (or "no dating") with "eating a bowl of fresh vomit every morning" (as a contractual requirement, maybe because some of the more vocal wota were barf-fetishists, and got turned on by that kind of thing)? Would you still feel the same

You made some good points before, but that IMO is not a good one.

Spoilered so as to conserve screen ink.

Spoiler: show

In contract law, one of the general defenses to non-performance is unconscionability. That's when a contract contains something in it which is so misleading, or unfair, or immoral, that no reasonable person in her right mind would freely consent to it if they knew the facts of it. Eating vomit, on the face of it, is something that a reasonable person would not do except under extreme duress, meaning, unless they were totally forced to do it by circumstances. Is not dating unconscionable? It might be sorta messed up, but in the real world plenty of people don't date, or think dating is wrong for young people to do. I get that lots of people don't agree with this kind of restriction, but it doesn't seem unconscionable to me.

Another reason why eating vomit would not normally be put into the terms of a contract, at least going by general US law, is that it would be considered against public policy. Meaning that, the general policy of the government is in requesting that its citizens maintain good health. If they are being asked to do something which is unhealthy as part of a contract, then that would make either that clause severable (ignore just that rule) or the entire contract voidable (throw the whole thing out). The party who signed the contract wouldn't have to obey something so disgusting, and could not get fired for not obeying it. Except maybe in New York.

Moving on, I hate to get all "internet debate team" on you, but I'm sure you know this argument is a rather naked slippery-slope fallacy. My sister was a waitress at Macceptable's restaurant. Macceptable's would not allow its waitstaff to wear disgusting torn and tattered clothing; they had to wear a uniform which had to be reasonably clean, pressed and in good repair. That's obviously UNFAIR for them to impose any conditions on their employees, right? Because what if, instead of having to put on clean clothes every morning, they had to eat a fresh bowl of vomit every morning? Same diff, right? Um, no. At the very least, seems reasonable to me that a family restaurant has a valid business-related interest in its staff being clean and sanitary, and that such conditions are not unduly burdensome.

Finally, there's the fact that idols work in the entertainment industry, where the rules of the game are somewhat different than they are in ordinary life. For example, for a normal job you would not typically be required to stay within 5 kilos of a certain weight. Your boss doesn't care how much you weigh, just if you can do the job. But if you're working on a $200 million movie, you might be required to maintain a certain weight range as terms of the contract. Er, sorry Joseph Gordon-Levitt, you're gonna have to lose that little gut ASAP. We need you as BATman, not as FATman.

Also, in entertainment, there are certain "morals clauses" which are almost always placed into contracts. The purpose of this for the business to make sure that if their star starts to act up, they can cut him or her loose before they totally destroy the image of the company. For example, Tiger Woods had endorsement deals with Gillette and GM that were terminated because he violated the morals clauses. With a normal job, your boss doesn't usually fire you if you have an affair, but Gillette didn't want their brand image commingled with that of a philanderer. WHY CAN'T TIGER WOODS HAVE A GIRLFRIEND? Well, he could, but he lost some gigs as a result. Same thing with idols. The morals clause doesn't allow them to smoke, have boyfriends, get tattoos, etc. They probably even need permission before dyeing their hair or getting it cut. Imagine if Miyabi got her hair cut in a Cassie Cut . That would probably be hotter than fuck. But I bet UF would have something to say if she did it without getting the ok first. She might even get "demoted" to a kenshuusei.

[Starra]

Tbh, I think the "no dating" rule is bullshit, but if it's part of their contracts, the girls should probably follow it. So if they do get caught dating, I think they should be punished in some way since it's breaching their contracts (assuming it's part of their contracts in the first place, which I'm assuming it is).

[Bakajo Nono]

I'm less concerned with the no dating thing in itself than the no dating rule being imposed on girls who function as sexualized beings. As I said before, it's just a cognitive dissonance for me.

[Celedam]

^ Start here…

viewtopic.php?p=87835#p87835

…and keep reading.

[TotallyUncool]

Pardon me, but I'm being massively distracted by the chibi-Musume.

In the discussion of the "no boyfriends" rule, what would happen if you replaced the phrase "no boyfriends" (or "no dating") with "eating a bowl of fresh vomit every morning" (as a contractual requirement, maybe because some of the more vocal wota were barf-fetishists, and got turned on by that kind of thing)? Would you still feel the same

You made some good points before, but that IMO is not a good one.

Spoilered so as to conserve screen ink.

Spoiler: show

In contract law, one of the general defenses to non-performance is unconscionability. That's when a contract contains something in it which is so misleading, or unfair, or immoral, that no reasonable person in her right mind would freely consent to it if they knew the facts of it. Eating vomit, on the face of it, is something that a reasonable person would not do except under extreme duress, meaning, unless they were totally forced to do it by circumstances. Is not dating unconscionable? It might be sorta messed up, but in the real world plenty of people don't date, or think dating is wrong for young people to do. I get that lots of people don't agree with this kind of restriction, but it doesn't seem unconscionable to me.

Another reason why eating vomit would not normally be put into the terms of a contract, at least going by general US law, is that it would be considered against public policy. Meaning that, the general policy of the government is in requesting that its citizens maintain good health. If they are being asked to do something which is unhealthy as part of a contract, then that would make either that clause severable (ignore just that rule) or the entire contract voidable (throw the whole thing out). The party who signed the contract wouldn't have to obey something so disgusting, and could not get fired for not obeying it. Except maybe in New York.

Moving on, I hate to get all "internet debate team" on you, but I'm sure you know this argument is a rather naked slippery-slope fallacy. My sister was a waitress at Macceptable's restaurant. Macceptable's would not allow its waitstaff to wear disgusting torn and tattered clothing; they had to wear a uniform which had to be reasonably clean, pressed and in good repair. That's obviously UNFAIR for them to impose any conditions on their employees, right? Because what if, instead of having to put on clean clothes every morning, they had to eat a fresh bowl of vomit every morning? Same diff, right? Um, no. At the very least, seems reasonable to me that a family restaurant has a valid business-related interest in its staff being clean and sanitary, and that such conditions are not unduly burdensome.

Finally, there's the fact that idols work in the entertainment industry, where the rules of the game are somewhat different than they are in ordinary life. For example, for a normal job you would not typically be required to stay within 5 kilos of a certain weight. Your boss doesn't care how much you weigh, just if you can do the job. But if you're working on a $200 million movie, you might be required to maintain a certain weight range as terms of the contract. Er, sorry Joseph Gordon-Levitt, you're gonna have to lose that little gut ASAP. We need you as BATman, not as FATman.

Also, in entertainment, there are certain "morals clauses" which are almost always placed into contracts. The purpose of this for the business to make sure that if their star starts to act up, they can cut him or her loose before they totally destroy the image of the company. For example, Tiger Woods had endorsement deals with Gillette and GM that were terminated because he violated the morals clauses. With a normal job, your boss doesn't usually fire you if you have an affair, but Gillette didn't want their brand image commingled with that of a philanderer. WHY CAN'T TIGER WOODS HAVE A GIRLFRIEND? Well, he could, but he lost some gigs as a result. Same thing with idols. The morals clause doesn't allow them to smoke, have boyfriends, get tattoos, etc. They probably even need permission before dyeing their hair or getting it cut. Imagine if Miyabi got her hair cut in a Cassie Cut . That would probably be hotter than fuck. But I bet UF would have something to say if she did it without getting the ok first. She might even get "demoted" to a kenshuusei.

But I wasn't talking about contractual legality, and i wasn't trying to make a slippery-slope argument. I was saying that if there's something going on in the idol business that you find depressing, and that strikes you as just plain wrong, you might be a lot less enthusiastic about it -- you might even feel like walking away from it altogether. (I know -- I listen to K-pop and watch old HK movie clips, and in both cases, I don't have much doubt that there's been some pretty ugly sexual exploitation going on behind the scenes. I find that even more depressing and I hope there isn't too much of that going on in the Japanese idol business, although it wouldn't surprise me if there is. But at least nobody tries to defend it.)

Tiger Woods, by the way, is and adult, even if he doesn't always act like one. He can make his own bad decisions when it comes to signing contracts. And I doubt that his contract required him to not be married, or to not have any girlfriends if he was unmarried -- just not to get caught having a little on the side. Thirteen and fourteen-year-olds are kids, and adults frequently make the bad contract decisions for them. And their contracts (which I truly hope are honored much more in the breach than the observance) apparently say "no jelly-roll at all for you while you're working for us!" Not quite the same thing as "don't get caught doing something that a large part of the buying public won't like."

[Zunu]

What you say about kids not being competent to enter into contracts is a good point. But common law and tradition say that it's not you or I who get to determine in that case whether a kid is entering fairly into a contract; it's her parents. Every one of these idols has a parent or guardian who is agreeing that it's okay for the girl to forgo having a boyfriend for a few years in exchange for making a crapload of money which can be used for college or possibly to pay off the parents' massive gambling debts or whatever. As I mentioned previously, when I was 13-14, I was forbidden to date because that was the custom in my church. I didn't sign a contract, it was just by fiat and there was no pot of gold at the end of the rainbow except you know, in theory anyway, avoiding eternal damnation. Woohoo!

The fundamental basis for entering into a contract is a meeting of the minds. The two parties have to agree that something is to their mutual benefit. As much as you keep railing against the industry, the flip side is that this is equally about parents contractually consenting that their virginal little angels remain virginal little angels. The horror! Perhaps they even feel that it's for their daughters' own protection. The agency is saying, look, the entertainment industry is full of vultures. We're assuring you that we're going to protect your daughters from being preyed upon by assistant producers, boom operators, horny boy bands. This restriction will help set your mind at ease that while your young impressionable "thirteen and fourteen-year-olds" are out touring thousands of kilometers away, we will do our best to make sure they don't return to you in worse shape than when you placed them in our care.

Parents like you who want their teenaged girls to experience love and/or sexual pleasures at a tender age (or who are insistent that they keep their options open) would not sign their kids up for this to begin with. Idol parents are already on board with the idea of their daughters staying virgins. They already know about all the scandals, but have seen the rewards, and have seen how in general H!P girls seem to grow up pretty well adjusted, not like Lohanesque trainwrecks. I'm not arguing in favor of sexual abstinence, but in the scheme of things, there are worse things. It's pretty hard to score weed in Japan too, for instance. The focus on a lack of romance as being tantamount to abuse seems to me a rather US/Western-centric critique. Harking back to my earlier point, are we equally critical of the rules against smoking and tattoos?