Yuka Kubo: Why Do Girls "Moru"?

2021/08/20

"Even if you change your appearance, your inner self doesn't change. So why do Japanese girls try to make their eyes look so big?" I was once asked this question by a French woman working for a cosmetics manufacturer. She seemed to have the impression that Japanese girls prioritize "appearance" over their "inner self." Certainly, in the late 2000s, Japanese girls posted many photos of themselves with extremely large eyes—so-called "deka-me" (big eyes)—to mobile blogs for feature phones (garakei), which were popular among them at the time. They call the act of creating such an appearance that differs from reality "moru." I focused on this behavior of "moru" from a technical perspective and began interviewing the girls who were putting their efforts into it at that time. When I asked, "Why do you 'moru'?" everyone was at a loss for an answer at first. When I tentatively asked, "Is it because you want to be popular with boys?" they gave ambiguous answers like, "It's not that it's not that, but it's not exactly that either." The answer they finally arrived at was unexpected: "To be myself." The faces of the "deka-me" girls looked identical to me. Living things have diversity, and there are individual differences in people's natural faces, but when they artificially "moru," they become uniform. However, in the end, everyone used words like "being myself" or "individuality," which are the opposite of that. Why?

To solve that mystery, I began observing the behavior of "deka-me" girls and made several discoveries. For example, the false eyelashes they wore on their eyes were not used as ready-made products; they cut up multiple products and combined them to customize them to their own specifications. After learning these facts and looking at their faces again, individuality began to emerge from the "deka-me" looks that had seemed identical. In other words, among the girls who created "deka-me," they could see each other's individuality from the beginning. They said they felt "happy" when they referred to other people's photos posted on mobile blogs, made changes to the details, and then posted the resulting photos back to the mobile blogs to serve as a reference for others. By sharing the "deka-me" template and expressing individuality in the details through visual communication where they referred to each other, girls who never met in real life were connecting virtually. When I asked, "Why do you seek connections on mobile blogs even though you have friends at school?" they replied that while they get along with school friends, "it's not necessarily the case that the people who truly suit me are there." I realized that they "moru" on the internet in pursuit of "people who truly suit them" somewhere out there.

By the mid-2010s, "deka-me" photos were rarely seen. Girls switched from feature phones to smartphones, and the primary destination for posting photos became Instagram. What was posted there frequently were so-called "Insta-bae" (Instagrammable) photos, which created fantastical scenes by combining not just their own figures but also clothes, accessories, and locations. Furthermore, since around 2020, many videos depicting high-quality lifestyles at home during the COVID-19 pandemic have been posted on Instagram, YouTube, and TikTok. Behind this change is a shift in the visual communication environment surrounding them. Cameras attached to feature phones were small and could only capture small subjects like faces or eyes in high definition, but cameras attached to smartphones became capable of capturing wide subjects like scenes in high definition. In recent years, video recording functions have improved through image processing using machine learning. Leveraging such technological innovations, the target of their "moru" has shifted from "eyes" to "scenes" to "lifestyles." Posts are now accompanied by hashtags not only in Japanese but also in Korean, as they seek "people who truly suit them" beyond school and even across national borders.

In those posts, the act of hiding the face has increased. Their figures are visible, but they composite illustrations over their faces or crop them out. When asked for the reason, they replied that faces "don't serve as a reference" for others. There are individual differences in people's natural appearance, and no matter how much a face is artificially processed, that influence cannot be wiped away. When there are individual differences, it is difficult for others to apply those methods to themselves or use them as a reference. Therefore, to be a reference for others, they show each other appearances where individual differences have less impact, such as scenes or lifestyles. What they were showing each other in the "deka-me" photos was also not the face itself, but the eye makeup. On the other hand, faces, where individual differences are likely to have an impact, are either made uniform through "moru" or hidden. Their communication certainly prioritizes "appearance," but it is not an appearance that simply "is" naturally; it is an appearance that is artificially "created." And if that is built upon things that come from within, such as effort and creativity, could it not be said that they prioritize the "inner self" rather than "appearance"?