"Uncle Fans" And The Shaming of Fetishized Female Asian Pop Stars. Why Is This Tolerated?

Jezebel featured a disturbing story about a 20 year-old Japanese pop star, one of dozens of young women in a "girl group" called AKB48. The woman, Minami Minegishi, violated the no-dating rule the band has in place for its performers and was caught by a photographer leaving the home of her boyfriend on a recent morning. For this transgression, she shaved her head, made a tearful apology video for her fans, and was demoted from some higher status she had within the group to that of a "research student."CBS News reports "AKB48 says it forbids its members from dating to project a clean image and signal their devotion to the group and their mostly male fans."A clean image? Really? You can see a five minute AKB48 music video at the Jezebel piece. The opening seconds are of an young looking girl in lingerie being caught disrobing (the camera is looking through a keyhole). She appears later wearing fishnet stockings and with her 89 co-stars sharing bathtubs, kissing one another and passing cookies mouth-to-mouth, all while writhing around in a little-girl bedroom environment with stuffed animals and pink flower petals.It's a fetishized, highly disturbing sexualization of childhood with a backdrop of music supposedly aimed at younger girls between maybe 10 and 13. If that market- "tween" pubescent girls- were the ones buying the lion's share of this music, it would be unfortunate enough. US pop stars have for years been pushed to sexualize pubescence or worse (see Britney Spears, circa 1996). But for many groups like AKB48 and similar "J-Pop" and "K-Pop" acts from South Korea and Japan, the fan base is mostly male and much older.So the concern is hardly a "clean image." It's far more not alienating their older male fans who not only buy up their CDs, but also covet tickets to so-called "handshake events" where they seek as much one-on-one time with their favorite girls as producers or whomever will allow. CD's often come with coupons that can be redeemed toward tickets to handshake events, so supposedly American or Asian men with the requisite funds can by hundreds of CD's at a time in order to procure a ticket, fly to Japan and get face time with the child idol of their choice.Anyone who isn't alarmed by this as a gold-plated opportunity for child sexual exploitation is remarkably naive. How much money would it take for an "uncle fan" (the misleading term given to older men who follow little girl groups) to get, say, just 30 minutes alone with a young female performer, away from the prying eyes of the public? How about a private dinner at a discrete and exclusive club or hotel? And would she have to be 18, if he was really just being an "uncle" anyway? What's the harm with a gentle uncle spending some alone time with his "niece?"Is there anyone who honestly believes the right amount of money and discretion couldn't buy direct access to these children and young women for God knows what?Come back to the reason behind Minegishi's humiliating apology video. She violated a rule put in place so that the group's older male fans won't be offended by their affections being aimed elsewhere. The idea is that these men feel a bond with their girl idols; the idols sing to them, are loyal to them. Belong to them.Because she violated the terms of her fantasy, "owner-slave girl" relationship with some untold number of men nearly twice her age, she was punished, including a grotesque head shaving (evoking self-mutilation) and apology to those men. Those are the rules for pop stardom in Japan. Alienate men and suffer the consequences.People usually envision children abused in the production of pornography, and they are. But sexual abuse and exploitation of children occurs in the mainstream entertainment world as much as in any other institution. Just as in institutions built around high level athletics, kids in high-level entertainment are separated from their families and handled like commodities by media coaches, choreographers, producers and so on. Access to them becomes easier for predators through many vectors.What's happened Minegishi is already despicable. What we don't know about scares me more.