3 reasons the Hairstyle Contest really ruffled some feathers...
[To the Devs]The reason the contest upset many, me included, was the over-representation of finalists from Japan. 3 additional points:
1) The EU and US aren't going to have the same aesthetic values.
2) Hairstyle variation for popular styles is fairly limited.
3) Males and Females tend to have different aesthetic values.
In Summary - There is a few ways the Dev Team could have been more inclusive. Separating the contest entries by player region, granting each region one hairstyle to represent them. Also worth considering is making aesthetic categories for each gendered hairstyle, like "Casual or Formal", preferably also including categories for people of color or ethnicities which have difficulty emulating Eurocentric or Asian hairstyles. Further, judges need to be accurately representative of gender in society. Human sex ratio across the species is 1.01:1, with all 3 contest regions combined averaging about 52% female and 48% male.