ABSTRACT
The shōjo image is often associated with the ribbon, a schoolgirl fashion item that appeared repeatedly in magazine illustrations of girls in the early decades of the twentieth century. Honda Masuko likens ribbons to the narrative tone of girls' stories, asserting that, like a ribbon fluttering in the wind, girls' fantasy stories often blur the border between the real and the imaginary (Honda 1992b: 180). 1 In many ways, the ribbon was a symbolic cultural and literary icon that gave girls the right to enter a fantasy world of their own making. However, since there were, in fact, only a small number of girls who could afford to attend school and to proudly wear ribbons, the ribbon was also an indictor of status and class. As the majority of girls were working class, they could not afford to wear ribbons and therefore could only participate peripherally in mainstream girls' culture.
