NYU Student Who Works At That Maid Cafe Says It “Definitely Isn’t Sexualized”
By Claire Voon
Entering the Maid Cafe in Chinatown is like entering another world, where literally everything is nauseatingly sweet and adorable. Open since mid-August, the cafe brings the Japanese custom of maid cafes to New York, with waitresses dressed as maids serving traditional Japanese food in a setting that recalls a dollhouse.
But it’s also kind of a creepy place, where one may find men delighting in the fact that cute girls are fetching their froyo and bubble teas. (Maid Cafe’s Facebook page also features some telling comments: “I think I had a dream like this once” or “The thirst is unreal.”) It’s hard to say what these hungry and thirsty men really want when they visit the cafe, and while maid cafe culture isn’t intended as a sexualized endeavor, one can’t deny that this whole thing just screams, “ASIAN FETISH!”
Mary*, a sophomore in CAS who has been working at the Maid Cafe since early October, denies this cynicism point-blank.
“The maid cafe culture definitely isn’t sexualized,” she said. “If people see it as a sexual thing, it’s not our problem. It’s not intended to be that, it’s more a novelty thing.”
Passing the koi fish pond outside the cafe brings you to a space seemingly designed with only color swatch cards from Pottery Barn Kids and soundtracked by energized Japanese pop songs that make you feel like you’re in a Nintendo video game. The cafe also houses a mini store selling frilly Lolita-style clothing and a range of oh-so-darling knickknacks, from Rilakkuma key covers to false eyelashes to little hair-bows to compact mirrors in the shape of an Oreo. You may even stock up your J-pop CD collection. The waitresses themselves don a different persona, slipping on puff-sleeved white shirts and short bubblegum pink dresses over petticoats, their uniforms complete with lacy aprons and little headbands. They also have to act in a specific manner. As Maid Cafe mentions, its maids are all “professionally trained.”
The cafe is part of the broader community of Japanese cosplay, so it is a kind of magnet for fans of this culture who want to experience a little bit of Japan in downtown Manhattan. Mary herself attends cosplay conventions and actually learned about the Maid Cafe through NYU’s anime club. To her, the Maid Cafe is just a microcosm of that culture.
“Oftentimes the boss [a Japanese man] is in the café watching us, but you can’t really tell it’s him because he’s in disguises,” Mary said. “So he will tell you to act in a certain way. We have to smile all the time, and since [the cafe] is so new, everybody is learning how to be cuter. And if you…have to get past someone, instead of saying “Excuse me” or “Sorry,” you say ‘Nya,’ like, ‘Sorry-nya.’” [Author’s note: nya means “meow” in Japanese, take that as you will.] She added that maids have to speak in happy, high-pitched voices when interacting with customers.
However, Mary tells us the cafe isn’t exactly like a typical Japanese maid cafe, since “people might get weirded out because in Japan the maids will talk to you, play games with you, and even for an additional charge offer you massages.” Still, Maid Cafe does plan on introducing some of these traditions during certain hours. Maids will play “cute” games, from card games to one similar to rock, paper, scissors, and conversing at length with customers.
Denying the cafe’s underlying eroticism, Mary said, “The maid outfit itself is something you would not see in everyday life, so…people are more amazed than seeing it as a fetish thing.” She also described the clientele as generally evenly distributed between male and female, consisting mainly of tourists, although there are “people who come in every day.” She’s also never had an uncomfortable experience, saying that people have been fairly respectful and never pushy. The only comments she receives are ones about her being “really cute.”
Still, the way Maid Cafe urges and promotes adorableness leaves you with an uneasy feeling. Customers may pay $5 to take a “Kawaii Instax Polaroid with you and your favorite maid,” and there is allegedly a “Love Note Book” where they may leave messages. I felt as if I was watching an eerie doll as my tiny, wide-eyed waitress named Usagi (her “maid name” meaning “rabbit”) placed a dainty bowl of rice molded into the shape of a heart in front of my roommate on our very, very small table.
“Sorry for keeping you waiting,” Usagi squeaked, although only 15 minutes had passed since we ordered. “I hope you enjoy your food!” And with a hint of a curtsy, she scampered back to the dessert-laden counter.
Aside from their overly courteous and girlish demeanor, the maids also must know a couple of Japanese phrases that emphasize their subservience.
“If people walk in you have to say ‘Okaerinasaimase,’ which means ‘Welcome home [master],” Mary said. “When they leave you say, ‘Bye-bye’ or ‘Mata ne,’ which means ‘Come back.’ If you’re a customer and you say, ‘MCNY [Maid Cafe New York], we line up and say, ‘Itterasshaimase,’ which is a respectful way of saying ‘Have a safe trip’ or ‘See you,’ to the end of which we usually add ‘Goshujim-sama,’ which means ‘Master,’ or ‘Ohime-sama’ for girls, which means ‘Princess.’”
While no one called me Princess when I left the Maid Cafe, the maids’ willingness to subordinate themselves stunned me. Even if this isn’t a “fetish thing,” the fact that the customers who visit daily are “mostly male, anywhere from 18–25” raises a red flag. On top of that, while Mary says she hasn’t met anyone creepy, she recalled one man following another maid onto the subway and lingering near her. When the maid asked him which stop was his, he supposedly said, “I already passed it.”
“So it was a bit creepy,” Mary said. “But Japan has very set rules, and here it’s the same way. Like, we can’t tell them our names or anything about us. But the maid cafe is such a new type of thing that people who come in aren’t familiar with the rules.”
It’s worthy to note that the cafe doesn’t hire only Asian women, but according to Mary — who is Chinese but born in America — the majority of its maids are from Japan and know a lot about maid cafe culture. So while it seems like these women are perpetuating a fetishism for Asian girls or the Asian stereotype of being submissive and gentle, or are taking a step back for womankind in general, their behaviors are perhaps just seen in a context that will never, ever be appropriate. Plus, in the end, isn’t feminism about choice, anyway?
“We’re doing this because we all want to,” Mary said. “Honestly, I just wanted to make the money. It’s kind of more giving us the choice to be who we want to be instead of [being stronger than men]. In the space of the cafe we can be cute or whatever, but outside we can be who we are in real life. And I think that’s the takeaway from all this.”
*Name has been changed.
