The female participants range from school girls or JK business to housewives. The most common connotation is that it is a form of child prostitution whereby participating girls sell their bodies in exchange for designer goods or money. This perception arises from suspicions that when these girls are adults, they will quickly abandon their loyalties and commitments to their family for offers of money and material benefits. Control over their bodies and means to support themselves is a new kind of independence for these girls.
Feminists such as Chizuko Ueno point out that the accidental access of girls to this dating market was not a matter of ethics, but of probability. Only later does she stop when a friend or individual intervenes and informs her of the potential risks and consequences of her behavior. Several examples from films and television series are listed below.
Harada uses the plot as a metaphor for and critique of Japanese consumerism, in which everything including people becomes a product. Her parents do not pay much attention to her and Hiromi often hangs out with her three closest friends who have been going on subsidized dates.
Hiromi follows her friends and begins doing the same. Throughout the movie, they meet with different kinds of men and accompany them in various activities. These activities include having dinner at a restaurant, tasting a man's cooking, singing at a karaoke bar and visiting in a video rental store.
Although Hiromi nearly gives in and has sex for the remainder of money needed for the ring, her date gives her a lesson on why she should not do so. In the Japanese live action drama series GTO Great Teacher Onizuka , a female student named Miyabi, out of boredom and lack of adult supervision at home, pressures her friends, Chikako and Erika, to go on subsidized dates with older men, and to steal their money when the men are in the showers.
