Please Meet My Pillow, We've Been Together for Three Years

There was a hugely fascinating article in this weekend's New York Times about a Japanese social phenomenon that needs to be read to be believed: A growing community of men are happily in love with 2-D animated characters. It’s like Lars and The Real Girl, but instead of being in love with anatomically correct dolls, these men are in love with pillows, decorated with the image of an (often pre-pubescent) anime character. Apparently, it’s socially acceptable. There’s a word for this predilection (moe) and, according to the story, most men deeply involved with anime and magna culture can put themselves on a 1-10 scale of moe-ness, with one being totally into real women, 10 being totally into animated ones. The "guru" of the “2-D Love Movement” was even booed for confessing to watching 3-D porn.

If you doubted there was some psychological benefit to getting laid at a young age (either thanks to pre-marital sex or an early marriage), consider the fact that this phenomenon is “attributed in part to the difficulty many young Japanese have in navigating modern romantic life. More than a quarter of men and women between the ages of 30 and 34 are virgins; 50 percent of men and women in Japan do not have friends of the opposite sex.” And thus, they turn to pillows.

And yet as unhealthy and strange as this whole being in love with objects thing seems to be, there’s so much interesting stuff at play here: The movement's leading proponent defends his choice as one that takes a stand against "romantic capitalism.” He believes that: "romance was marketed so excessively through B-movies, soap operas and novels during Japan’s economic bubble of the ’80s that it has become a commodity and its true value has been lost; romance is so tainted with social constructs that it can be bought by only good looks and money.” Which, you know, there’s something to, if not quite enough to make most of us fall in love with inanimate objects.

Other things I wonder: Can you really fall in love with a pillow? How does this relate/compare to self-identifying as asexual? Is it really better than just being lonely?

Tags: 2-D, Anime, Japan, Otaku

Willa Paskin Writer, pop culture junkie

Comments

I've felt really uneasy

By: Trixie Films | Thu, 07/30/2009 - 23:36

I've felt really uneasy watching the 'freak show' dynamic as it's played out this week. As Rachel says, it's good to talk about underlying issues for this kind of isolation and fetishism. There are a lot of lonely people out there, even if they're not carrying around pillows with pictures of prepubescent fantasy objects on them.

Just yesterday I wrote in The American Virgin about a Savage Love column that ran three letters from older male virgins. Their stories are very depressing, but many of the comments were encouraging and empathetic. I want to believe that creating more openness and community could help many isolated people reconnect to the world and maybe pursue intimate relationships. http://tinyurl.com/lulh4o

Hi Willa, I think this piece

By: Rachel Hills | Tue, 07/28/2009 - 08:32

Hi Willa, I think this piece hit on the most interesting thing about this phenomenon: the sense of loneliness that underscores it.

Japan has for a while been the go-to country for oddball stories - especially those relating to isolation. That a staggering 25 percent of Japanese men and women have not had intercourse by their early thirties (or, presumably, in many cases an intimate relationship) speaks of this isolation. But as The American Virgin points out, the Japanese aren’t the only ones having trouble negotiating the modern sex and relationships field.

Through my own research on young adults’ attitudes on sex and relationships, along with my work as a journalist, I’ve noticed a substantial - but usually invisible - minority of women and men in their mid-late twenties who are yet to experience an ongoing relationship. Most of them have had sex, but it’s less the Bacchanalian orgy portrayed in most media coverage of hook-up culture than something far more intermittent and episodic. As one 22-year-old explained, “The frequency of these encounters are quite low. The most promiscuous of my friends would have four in one year; others would have none.” Her remarks are typical.

None of the people I have spoken with have resorted to relations with a pillow or a doll. By all accounts and observation, they’re completely normal, but that’s the point: their experiences are normal. And they aren’t all bad, either. Largely, they’re linked the delayed age of marriage and our increased focus on self-actualization before “settling down“.

Stories like the New York Times one have an obvious “freak” appeal, but it strikes me that it would be more useful - and just as interesting - to focus more on the issues that underlie them, and the way these issues play out closer to the middle of the bell curve.