Tyler links to an article (warning: as Tyler says, it’s PG-13) about Japan’s recent ban on the sale of soiled panties by underaged girls. Apparently some Japanese men – enough to create a thriving market – like to acquire the used panties for erotic purposes.
I let the story about a guy auctioning off his virginity pass without comment because I didn’t see a real policy lesson there. But in this case, there is a very serious point: banning a practice you find offensive rarely, if ever, means that the practice will disappear. On the contrary, the outcome is typically a more dangerous manifestation of the same practice. How did the law of unintended consequences play out in this case? Read on:
“Underage sellers aren’t punished under the ordinance, so the girls are pretty composed about the whole thing,” says Gomez Yamada, a writer specializing on teen girl topics. “The ordinance may have shut down the burusera stores, but it has only sparked a thriving trade in schoolgirls using mobile phone sites to conduct direct sales to customers without needing a middleman. They’ll arrange to meet in some dark spot like a karaoke box or beside a building, then remove and hand over their panties on the spot in exchange for payment. What’s more, they’re charging 5,000 to 10,000 yen a pair, about five times what they would have got from a burusera shop. Some girls are even happy the ordinance has come into effect because it’s done away with the burusera shops that were eating into their profits.”
In other words, the market has gone underground. Girls used to sell their (under)wares to dealers with established businesses, whose primary interest was in making money. They never even had to meet the adult male buyers. But now, under the wise new policy, young girls are arranging clandestine meetings in dark venues with men who are turned on by girls’ underpants. Does anyone else see a disaster in the making?
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