Dispatches from the Maid Cafe

another popular anime convention. She was called back for an interview and said that she was required to develop her persona in advance. The convention organizers informed her that she made the final cut, so she sent in a down payment on her costume and underwent a quickie training. Aiko already works in the food service industry, so she was familiar with waiting tables. She would work at a maid cafe in real life because the atmosphere is so different than your regular gig waiting tables. Aiko noted that the emphasis here is on service, and she is encouraged to take a seat and get to know the customers.

Aiko did not refer to any of us as “mistress” or “master” – perhaps this happened with other tables, just not us. And as far as we could see, the only thing happening in the maid cafe was endless rounds of Hungry Hungry Hippos.

The final scorecard:

Is the maid cafe idea sexist?

Somewhat, yes. There was a butler included at the cafe (presumably as the token male) but maid cafes are generally designed to cater to men. In Japan, there are some areas similar to this for women, namely host clubs, but most of these themed cafes are designed for a male customer base.

Is the maid cafe idea racist?

In a sense yes, and in a sense no. Our group was the most split on this question because it was grinds against an uncomfortable part of our reality as con-goers. If it is racist to have young white women (and a couple of young Asian women who may or may not have been of Japanese decent) pretending to be Japanese for the maid cafe, the entire con is racist as people generally dress up as Japanese characters or random Japanese people.

Every year, there is a parade of attendees dressed in kimonos and parasols, or makeshift school girl outfits. (Sailor suits, strangely, aren’t as popular as the generic blazer/pleat skirt/knee sock combo.) You will also see many cheongsams, though those are Chinese in origin, and people doing their own takes on Gothic Lolita fashion.

Part of this speaks to that hazy line between cultural appreciation and cultural appropriation, that we will start to discuss soon in another series. However, at a Con, using random Japanese phrases, playing dress up, looking for posters of J-Rock and Visual Kei bands and the like are all considered normal behavior. Along these lines, it would be extremely difficult to discuss the racist elements of the maid cafe without dissecting the racist elements at a convention.

The implementation of the maid cafe at Katsucon was racist/sexist.

With the above caveat in mind, we’re going to go with no. While there are definitely sexist overtones to the choice of hosting a maid cafe (and strangely, no mention of a host club, though there was an extremely popular anime surrounding host club culture), the actual implementation of it was fairly bland. At a convention where hentai is available in common rooms after midnight for those 18 and up, and most of the girls walking around in their cosplay outfits are showing acres of skin, the maid cafe itself was surprisingly chaste. The waitresses were fully covered, skirts were close to the knee, and there was no excessive kneeling that we could see. (Maybe they changed that tactic after the Post article dropped.) One of my friends remarked that this was closer to dinner theater than an actual maid cafe. And so it was. A slightly cheaper way to get hotel food than room service, the maid cafe served its purpose and raised a bunch of money for charity.

So, while I will parse out sexism and racism at conventions in another post, I’ll have to admit that none of us felt any strong emotions at the concept or execution of the maid cafe.

However, there was one thing we were all heavily offended by – the big block of dry ass rice that they tried to pass off as onigiri.

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