MOLI VIEW™

Before I move on to blogging about my adventures in Hanoi and dogs in a whole other context, I have to comment on the phenomenon in Japan of the make inu.

First a disclaimer of sorts: I admit, I do not have a deep or profound understanding of gender roles in Japan. From what I do know, young women from good families often enter the workplace with the expectation that they will leave once they find a husband and get married (which is in part why companies in Japan still don't take women's careers seriously and rarely promote them). The 20-something years for these women are also marked by a sense of freedom — they take lovers, they travel, they buy frivolous things and some experiment with drugs or indulge in other obvious signs of rebellion, like dyeing their hair hot pink — with the expectation that all of this will soon come to an end with marriage. And after marriage, they will somehow live happily, keeping a tidy home and raising children, in the suburbs.

The thing that's striking about this model is that it's not that far from American society and its expectations for women pre-1970s. And in fact, there are still women who grow up wanting to live this model of womanhood (though it's more and more rare that a woman of any marital status in the U.S. can stop working, even if she wanted to, simply for economic reasons).

But I was shocked to find that Japan is actually running its own smear campaign against working unmarried women who buck tradition and stay in their jobs past the age of 30. Enter the make inu. The literal translation of the word is "loser dog," and it's the term used to insult any woman over 30 who is single and childless. There are those who claim the translation is actually a little bit gentler and akin to "underdog," but it's a stinging insult all the same.

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