Full discloser: This article is not intended to induce personal judgement or self-consciousness, though if these feelings do arouse, be aware of why they occur and how they’re related to the contents of this article.
I’m 115 pounds and 5’5, and people called me fat in China.
At first these accusations seemed ridiculous; I had never been self-conscious of my weight before, and I try to maintain relatively healthy exercise and eating routines. It was only when it happened a second time that I started to observe myself and others more closely. It really began as pure curiosity which tumbled me further and further into self-consciousness about my figure. The more self-conscious and shrunken I felt, the more these remarks kept happening. In the end I concluded that most of why I was being called fat was because I felt that I was and that deprecating thought mirrored off others.
In the time that this was happening, another female was introduced at work whom most agreed had a very attractive figure. Roughly estimating I would say she was around 110 pounds and 5’9, which by western standards would be unhealthily thin. Because the girl and I have similar backgrounds – both of us were born in China and study in America – our coworkers began to place us together. Rather than comparing work ethics, capabilities, personality, etc., – really anything that means something – the first thing they did was compare our attractiveness. My job was as an entrepreneurship instructor while hers as a translator, both of which involved dealing with a lot of children on a daily basis. I think the worst thing was that our coworkers felt it appropriate to inquire about our attractiveness to the 7-13 year old children we were working with.
These two events threw me into involvement on a subject I was content not worrying about before. I feel unable to keep silent on the subject any longer.
It’s really very easy to dismiss the Eastern trend of being skinny as a fascination with beauty and a stereotype, but I think it goes much further than that. In recent decades, Asian countries are beginning to register eating disorders as an actual phenomenon, and it’s more rampant than stereotypes would allow. According to a research published in September of last year by Pike of Columbia University, places of rising economies and industries coincide with levels of eating disorder. But for Asian countries in particular, the obsession with being thin and the rise in EA can be explained a lot by cultural values and gender roles. Although the original “thin body ideal” stemmed from western influence, the obsession with thin has stemmed off in Asia and grown independently of western ideals. This is exemplified in a recent trend that spead throughout China, where women held up a piece of paper vertically to show they were "paper-thin women." (shown in picture above)
Along with the obsession with body figure is the high emphasis on skin and appearance. In the last decade, Asia has seen a rising fascination with beauty standards that borders on infantilization. The beliefs that originated from class differentiation and gender discrimination – pale skin, bound feet, and frailty – should’ve lost their echo when the 20th century ended, yet we see rising trends which have tentacled off of these outmoded practices. It’s very hard not to notice the unhealthy obsession with pale skin and small frail figures. The problem is made worse now that beauty standards have globalized; it’s allowed original Asian beauty standards to blend with western standards and mutate into a combination known as “kawaii”, which can only be explained as an obsession with being cute. In essence, “beauty” now consists of large round eyes, adolescent-thin figures, adorable selfie poses, and a lot of plastic surgery.
Going back to my work story. Working with children is tough, and for a lot of reasons. But what I found most frustrating wasn’t their tireless energy, but the poor societal effects I could already see setting in on them. At the prime age of 7, most of the girls were already much more aware of themselves and their appearances than the boys. The boys were already dismissive of the girls’ capabilities in anything to do with physical activity and STEM, and the girls allowed themselves to watch from the sidelines. Already prepping to be the perfect housewife with a part time job, as Chinese standards would allow it. That of course goes into another systemic problem that is just too long to discuss for this short article about Chinese beauty standards. However, what is important to say is this: The children are listening, and for them it’s not too late. When young girls are looking up to their supervisors and mothers for guidance and they see all this effort to change what we look like, how we act, and who we are, they notice. My main point is not to change the way we act around children, but the way we act around ourselves. Although we can never change other people’s judgements, we can definitely change our judgement of other people, and ultimately ourselves. Now that was a lot of ridiculous self-help quotes that probably didn’t help, but here’s something you can do: look out into the world and stop comparing, try your hardest to stop caring about the things that don’t matter. And that goes beyond reserving judgement of others, but not holding judgement to begin with.
Because these things that we care about …
How pale my skin is; how large my eyes are; how soft my hands are; how large the gap between my thighs; how thin my body is; how visible my double chin; how flabby my arms; how many wrinkles cover my face; how small my feet are; how rose/peach/cherry like my mouth; how straight my eyebrows ...
How ridiculous we are for caring.
