{"id":63460,"date":"2014-08-06T09:00:56","date_gmt":"2014-08-06T14:00:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/?p=63460"},"modified":"2014-08-06T13:54:31","modified_gmt":"2014-08-06T18:54:31","slug":"skirting-ochobo-when-customs-impede-profits-big-business-finds-a-way","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/2014\/08\/06\/skirting-ochobo-when-customs-impede-profits-big-business-finds-a-way\/","title":{"rendered":"Skirting Ochobo: Big Business Finds a Way around Local Customs"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ten\u00a0women marched in defiance of the stigma against women\u00a0smoking cigarettes as part of the New York Easter Day Parade in 1929. \u00a0The interesting thing was, however, it was all a sham<\/a>. The tobacco industry had set the whole thing up with the help of public relations mastermind, Edward Bernays. \u00a0American Tobacco Company President George Hill\u00a0 knew cigarette sales would skyrocket if more U.S. women smoked, a behavior reserved for men in the 1920s that had closed off the female market.<\/p>\n

Within one year of Bernay\u2019s stint, women were smoking.<\/p>\n

Today, similarly, Japanese fast-food has found a way to bypass the cultural stigmas that impede their profits. One food chain noticed many women would not buy their biggest-sized burgers.\u00a0 The culprit was ochobo<\/em>, a Japanese custom that prevents women from opening their mouth widely in public.\u00a0 Small mouths are considered beautiful and opening them widely is considered “ugly” and “rude.”\u00a0 The restaurant concluded that it would get into the business of \u201cfreeing women from the spell of \u2018ochobo.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

\"1\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The burger chain invented a wrapper that would allow women to open their mouths larger, but not be seen: the<\/em> liberation wrapper<\/em>. It is a profitable tactic touted as a cultural solution.<\/p>\n

\"2\"<\/a><\/p>\n

You can watch them introduce the wrapper in this short video:<\/p>\n

<\/object><\/p>\n

The liberation wrapper was welcomed in Japanese media and social networks, spreading its popularity.\u00a0 Similarly, Bernay\u2019s public relation\u2019s stint in 1929 garnered much of its success from the media hype that ensued then.<\/p>\n

The approach has produced results. Sales of the Japanese chain’s biggest burgers jumped 213% after the wrappers were made because they allowed the burgers to become \u201csocially available\u201d to women.<\/p>\n

Of course, the irony is that the burger chain\u2019s \u201csolution\u201d isn\u2019t actually liberating women.\u00a0 By hiding the deviation behind a paper mask, it is actually reinforcing Ochobo. After all, the social reality remains — it is not acceptable for Japanese women to display an open mouth in public.<\/p>\n

Michael Lozano is a graduate of CSULB’s Sociology Honors program and frequent contributor to NewAmericaMedia.org and VoiceWaves.org, a hyper-local news site based in Long Beach, CA.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ten\u00a0women marched in defiance of the stigma against women\u00a0smoking cigarettes as part of the New York Easter Day Parade in 1929. \u00a0The interesting thing was, however, it was all a sham. The tobacco industry had set the whole thing up with the help of public relations mastermind, Edward Bernays. \u00a0American Tobacco Company President George Hill\u00a0 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":51,"featured_media":63463,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[23384,2124,55,2096,2095,129,23703,1821,293],"class_list":["post-63460","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-social-construction-discourselanguage","tag-foodagriculture","tag-gender","tag-gender-femininity","tag-gender-feminismactivism","tag-media","tag-marketing","tag-nation-japan","tag-social-construction"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/files\/2014\/07\/24.png","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63460","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/51"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=63460"}],"version-history":[{"count":14,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63460\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":63637,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63460\/revisions\/63637"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/63463"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=63460"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=63460"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=63460"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}