Misogyny might be — nay, probably is — too strong a word for certain events of Nogizaka Haruka no Himitsu’s tenth episode. It’s just that the “m” alliterates. You understand the importance of titular alliteration, I’m sure.

In particular, I’m referring to the Miss Hakujou Academy competition, in which Haruka participates as the returning champion during episode ten. Regarding its place among the goings-on of the episode, and of the series proper, it’s a minor event, functioning as little more than a testament to Haruka’s conventional perfection — while love rival Shiina enters as well, she never seems too put out by her loss, and she isn’t a very proactive love rival anyway. Yuuto’s friends explain the Miss Con, as they call it: though it’s never clear who decides the winner from among the final eight, said eight are chosen by vote. And who’s eligible to vote? The male students.

The male students specifically. But not the female students.

My first inclination was to call foul on the Hakujou Academy administration. Really, a competition for girls laid exclusively in the hands of high school guys, at least in its early stages? Is that wise? I’m not saying all high school guys are bastards, and it’s true that a few of them, at least, seemed impressed with the full gamut of Haruka’s many qualifications back in episode one, but, thanks to a volatile combination of physical development and social influences, high school guys on the whole have certain collective priorities. I suspect that any girl in a contest whose contestants are siphoned by a group of fifteen to eighteen year old males isn’t there because she can play the piano.

But who knows? It’s been a while since I’ve even been inside a high school. Maybe piano has recently replaced physical appearance as the leading attractor of young male interest. And there’s also the matter of Japan not being the country with which I have personal high school experience. My instincts tell me, though, that teenage guys are teenage guys, no matter where you go.

As I said, “misogyny” may be too strong a verdict here, especially where Hakujou’s male students are concerned. But if we look at it practically, the Hakujou administration has effectively silenced the female fraction of the student body on the matter of determining a girl’s worth — and, in doing so, has possibly encouraged the male students to follow suit. Consider the above picture, in which Yuuto’s friends interrupt his conversation with Shiina, relegating the Miss Con competitor to the background as they detail the competition in her stead. Shiina’s mild expression of “what the fuck, guys” is particularly poignant. Are we to take this as a warning of what can happen when authority-wielding institutions make bad decisions? I don’t know enough about the present state of Japanese high schools (and I’m not versed nearly enough in feminist criticism) to put it in a more specific context, so if you do, please enlighten me.

It’s entirely possible that I’m making something out of nothing here. Upon scouring the aniblogosphere for opinions offered by my contemporaries on the matter, I found that the Miss Hakujou Academy competition’s patriarchy didn’t stand out to the community proper, or at least not enough to garner words from the eight or so blogs I consulted. Have I fallen prey to a mistranslation, perhaps? My knowledge of Japanese being shoddy, at best, I’m a slave to subtitles and the subtitlers who write them. I’ve consulted two subbed versions of the episode on the matter, the second differing very little in its translation of the Miss Con explanation from the one pictured above, but the Brock-looking fellow on the left doesn’t exactly enunciate, and it’s possible that I’ve been led astray twice.

Perhaps it simply doesn’t matter that the Miss Con is a paragon of patriarchy. Or maybe it’s a good thing, a way of bringing the sexes together. Consider that Haruka has as many female worshipers as male, at least apparently so; clearly the girls have a vested interest in the picking of favorites. Resting the choice of Miss Con finalists in the hands of the guys may be a way of instilling a valuable lesson about cooperation between the sexes. They’ll have to coexist with their female classmates until graduation; imagine the hell a young man’s life would become if a group of high school girls decided to exact vengeance upon him in answer to his valuing the physical appearance of his Miss Con choices over their other qualities. Such an explanation might make light of the Hakujou administration’s phallocentrism, true, but nobody seems too perturbed by it anyway.