Gender in maid cafes, maid performance, rituals and agency : an account of a maid cafe in Singapore.

Abstract

The Maid Cafe is a recent phenomenon which boomed along with the Japanese animation wave, where girls from Japan are associated with the term kawaii (cute). When these two come together, the Maid Café becomes a place where kawaii females serve their customers like maids serving their masters. This study tries to pin down what exactly is it that the maids are serving to the customers – what aspects of their femininity are appealing to the consumers and how the maids are expected to play out certain kind of maid-ly behaviour. Maid Cafes are known to be ‘phantasmagorical’, similar to Disneyland, a temporal place where the girls working there act as maids. How do the girls see their work and play out their role as a maid? A small discussion will also be made on their private lives – and whether they affected by their work.