The "myth" that Asian girls are naturally slim
Females in Asia are consistently pressured via media, parents, men, etc to stay skinny. Celebrities usually weigh less than 100 lbs and a size L in Korea is the same as a women's size 7/8 in the USA. Diet products and plastic surgery abound. The social stigmatization of girls who are "fat" is brutal; therefore Asian women starve and purge their way to thinness.
If you want further proof, look at Korean adoptees in the USA. It's all about WHERE you are, not ethnicity.
I haven't read all the posts but my response is, I don't think it's a myth at all. I think it's true. Asian women are naturally slim. So are African women, European women, Australian women...etc. Every woman is naturally slim. It's an unnatural diet and lack of exercise that makes women, and men, fat. All humans are naturally inclined to be healthy and in shape...that's how we got this far. Overweight lazy slobs didn't hunt kill many buffalo or wild turkeys back in the caveman days, so natural selection got rid of them all millenia ago. What's left...is naturally thin, so long as you eat a natural diet and move around a bit.
Original Post by angiethe1_2005:
My sister in law is Asain she came in one summer with my brother for a visit. The last time she was in I was still really thin, first thing out of her mouth when she seen me and she was quite blunt
Wow you got really really fat You need to lose weight. So apparently in those countries being fat is a big no no. Maybe if we all were a bit rude to each other in the states most of us would not be so fat haha.
I'm a couple years late on this reply.. but that's exactly what I grew up with. Working and going to school with other races of all kinds, I feel normal, healthy, and am often called "thin". When I'm at home or around Asian friends and family, I literally feel like the most obese one of them all. Beyond obese in fact. When my mom notices when I gain maybe 3 lbs or so.. she'll say, "you need to stop eating, you need to exercise, you look so fat and round"..
Citing small plates and portions as a reason the people are skinny is a bit backwards to me. That’s an effect not a cause. Why are the plates smaller than American plates? Because the people demand less food. It is not as if plate size and portion size is some fixed constant, where the Asian cultures simply don't know how to make bigger plates. If people started to want more on their plates they will vote with their wallets and restaurants will start to supply the need. The ones that refuse get fewer customers.
Of course I don't know anyone who only eats at restaurants and fast food. So saying that Americans are fat because fast food joints serve big high calorie meals is equally backwards. Who eats all their food from fast food? Does nobody go to the grocery store and CHOOSE what to stuff their face with? They are only victims of what they are served I guess... or maybe they DEMAND what they are "served" by going to places with such things they want and buying the things they want at the grocery stores!
It's sort of like saying people consume as much gasoline as they are served. Well they darn well better be, given that they paid for and chose to buy it! If they didn't I'd say the customer is getting cheated.
I don't think you can blame someone for thinking that Asians are naturally smaller or skinny when every single Asian many of those people have ever seen is in fact small and skinny. The reality is that genetics dictate bone structure and culture dictates the weight that gets packed onto whatever frame they were born with. If the culture is pervasive then there will be fewer exceptions to prevent the stereotype.
-Alan
Original Post by beachbunnymom:
I'm an Asian female raised here in the US and I totally understand what you mean. As I grew up, my mother constantly told me to watch what I eat or else I wold get fat. I always felt like all of the other Filipino girls I grew up with were all so tiny compared to me. I was always self conscious about my body image and developed an eating disorder. People constantly come up to me and said things like..."your so lucky to be asian, this is why your so skinny"...I'm thinking to myself, I'm skinny because I hate my body and I starve myself, ha. And you know what else bothered me, people always thinking Asians were super smart. My parents never gave me those genes. I worked my ass off in school!!!
Um, I don't think there's a "smart Asian gene." I'm Asian, and while I want to consider myself intelligent, I pull off my grades just by working hard... every Asian works hard at it. My dad used to beat the crap out of me for having anything lower than a B, which made me want to work harder.
Also, I'm not part of the thin Asian stigma either. I'm 5'2" and 160 pounds -- but with much more muscle mass than your average Asian because I was sporty growing up (still am, kind of -- years ago, I wrestled and did martial arts. Now I swim a few miles a week). My mother and my sisters would ridicule me for being the second heaviest in the family. Every day, my mom would push me to lose weight, call me fat and ugly, and all that stuff. For most of my life, I've had a pretty poor self-image centered around my weight, but now that I've married a guy who models part-time, it's gotten even worse (especially with some of the comments he has said -- thanks to that, we are now in the process of separating and divorcing).
I've read the posts in this thread and read how some of the girls who are 5'1" and 120 pounds and feel like they're so fat and need to lose weight and feel terrible, etc... all I can say is: wow. I would kill to be 120. Try getting up to 160 with a bipolar, depressive Cambodian mother at your side, then get married to a guy who is a 6'3" good looking (but dumb) part-time model who did nothing but compare your looks to his "hot" ex-girlfriends, and see how bad your struggle with 120 pounds is now. Seriously. I am not trying to pick a fight or challenge anyone here, but I'd like people to appreciate what they've got.
I didn't read the whole thread, but I just wanted to put my 2 cents in.
I live in Japan, and have been here for two years. I was shocked by their obsession with weight when I first arrived. First of all, weight is not a taboo subject like in America, and they talk about weight quite openly. If you gain or lose some weight, watch out, because everyone will notice and comment on it. If you are overweight, they will ridicule you for it. I have seen it often among the kids at the school I work at, and even the teachers join in sometimes. The other American teacher in my town was quite overweight, and she was known as the "fat foreigner" by the townspeople. But if you are underweight, everyone will praise you for it and talk about how beautiful and thin you are.
Their BMI standards are different. My doctor told me that a BMI range of 17.5 to 23.9 is healthy, and anything beyond 24 is obese. There is no range for simply overweight. Before I lost weight my BMI was a healthy 22.5, and I was told that my weight was not ideal, only "so-so". Most of the celebrities on TV have a BMI less than 18.5. They do not idolize a womanly, hourglass figure here, it's all about being stick thin with no curves at all (however if you are foreign, they cut you some slack on this, thank God. They believe that only westerners can pull off a curvy look).
And I think most women are on some kind of diet pill or crazy fad diet or have eating disorders. I feel like the standards here for diet products are not the same as in America, and a lot of really shady, probably dangerous stuff is on the market.
There is little awareness of eating disorders, and mental health issues in general. I saw a TV special on anorexia here, and there was a story about a Japanese girl suffering from anorexia. She lived on just one bowl of rice a day, and she got down to about 35 kg. She was taken to the doctor three times by her worried mother, but every time the doctor let her go because the girl promised she would eat. Of course she didn't eat, and it took her getting down to close to the minimum weight a human can be (the total weight of all her organs, bones, skin, etc. hardly any fat or muscle at all) and being near death before they hospitalized her. She is now "healthy" and maintaining her weight at 40 kg, which is still underweight by western standards, and everyone on the show was talking about how great she looks. I thought she looked way too thin still.
I feel like living here has affected my own perception of what a healthy weight is. I recently saw Beyonce on TV, and I thought, "Wow, she is fat," but when I see Courteney Cox on Friends reruns, I think, "She has such a great body." I would have never thought that before coming here.
I do think asian girls are naturally smaller (height wise it seems in general) but not necessarily skinnier... Alot of people in asia just tend to be skinny because their definition of thin is anorexic skinny over here. What's voluptuous over here is considered fat over there (like beyonce... yeah... I was like beyonce is NOT fat!). Alot of girls in their normal weight is considered to be chubby/fat. Don't even get me started on the overweight category over here... over in asia they would be like what did they eat? O_O
its the diet and all that. The genes might have something to do with it but not as much as what people eat in asia. If they ate like americans every day I think alot of them would gain weight instantly... which they do (and then they lose weight during the summer, haha from alot of people I've known)
My brother might have the naturally slim gene (he eats anything he wants and doesn't gain a lb, skinny!) but I certainly don't.
I think asians might have smaller bone structure to start out with though... but I mean they'll gain weight the same.
Oh yeah. Total myth.
Not only on the slender part, also on the small sized part.
I am 100% Chinese born female, 19, came to the United States at age 8 so was mostly raised in the US culture. I gained a lot of weight once I first came, because I was underweight before(I think...no scales back then at home), and also because of the culture shock of more fatty foods/treats. Back before 8 yrs old, in China, a frozen delicacy was to take regular 2% milk, and freeze it like a popsicle. We would have sugary stuff, like mooncakes, but once a year. So part of it was definitely the culture that I was slim, tiny, but also frail.
After initially gaining weight, I stabilized, then got really into sports. I've been exercising, and eating much more "robustly" since freshman year of high school, so its been about 5 yrs or so now. I am 6' tall, and 170lbs, and look asian slim, but can bench press more than the bar, do 8 real pushups, and squat...I've never tried, but no leg exercise I'm doing right now ever makes my thighs sore.
Still 10 lbs and some fat to lose from my freshman year of college weight(freshman..more than 15). But otherwise, no way in HELL and I looking for 120 something lbs for me.
Oh yeah, and as far as bone structure-I am at least medium framed, if not large. On the finger test thing, if I squeeze tightly I'll make the fingers meet, if not, they're barely on the not touching side.
Interesting thread! I always assumed Asians were genetically thin. I don't know anybody that's Asian, but on a similar note of bluntness of different cultures about weight...a Romanian coworker (who wasn't exactly trim herself) that I didn't even know that well and hardly talked to out of nowhere asks what happened to me, that I used to be smaller. I didn't feel like she meant anything by it so I bit my tongue and just answered her politely, but geez you know, thanks for making me feel like a freak of nature.
This obviously goes to show that america is a fat country, and all the immigrants who go there get fat.
Look at the foreign exchange students who come there for a year. They balloon up about 15 lbs over that year, its ridiculous.
woooo such a wonderful thing to be proud of!
Puts america in an even worse light than it already is.
lulz
Healthisin - nice, real nice.
I come across posts on here of American's spending time in Europe and gaining weight.
How come you are trying to lose weight? You don't live in the USA so shouldn't you be skinny? & how come you come to an American site to lose weight & diss Americans so rudely?
I have to say - I am a proud American and I am at an IDEAL weight.
Original Post by yogagirl6853:
Healthisin - nice, real nice.
I come across posts on here of American's spending time in Europe and gaining weight.
How come you are trying to lose weight? You don't live in the USA so shouldn't you be skinny? & how come you come to an American site to lose weight & diss Americans so rudely?
I have to say - I am a proud American and I am at an IDEAL weight.
Ok.
Sheesh, americans get offended by the slightest things and cant handle the truth. Its a fact that USA is a fat country, get over it. It's a known fact, only an idiot would deny that.
Keep your pride hun, i never said everyone in europe was thin, its just that unlike the USA, over 2/3 of the people arent suffering with weight issues :)
Can you defend that?
Original Post by healthisinplease:
woooo such a wonderful thing to be proud of!
Puts america in an even worse light than it already is.
lulz
Offended by the slightest things. NO - it's your rudeness that's offensive.
Original Post by yogagirl6853:
Original Post by healthisinplease:
woooo such a wonderful thing to be proud of!
Puts america in an even worse light than it already is.
lulz
Offended by the slightest things. NO - it's your rudeness that's offensive.
Whaat? Everyone knows that the USA isnt much to brag about. You act like its big news. Its not being rude, its a fact that america is put in a bad light.
so. what. fact: your country is in a bad light. Theres no more to it. lol
Are all americans completely ignorant of the fact the USA is highly looked down upon? Not saying I do, but by most countries. Thats just how it is. America has a bad rep. Truth hurts.
You don't like it - GO HOME!
Go find a weight loss site in Norway where you can talk about how bad Americans are all you want.
Wow...I stumbled upon this post this morning and thought it was very interesting, besides the Xenophobia that seems to be seeping in. I am actually writing my dissertation on assimilation patterns of immigrants and children of immigrants BMI. Though my work focuses on Hispanics, particularly Mexicans, I do know quite a bit about Asians, specifically Vietnamese and Chinese. It is quite true immigrants arrive in the US thinner and gain weight the longer they are here. There is also a rather large body of research that suggests that the second generation (children of immigrants) may have much higher odds of overweight than children of natives and this applies to Asians, especially boys!!! In fact among girls difference by generation is slight. Other factors such as language and neighborhoods have also been examined. The US is referred to as an obesogenic (obesity inducing) environment. There is a lot of evidence to support this including our high rates of overweight, obesity, and morbid obesity. If you have questions let me know, I can probably answer them!
Thank you liz - that is an appropriate way to say it... My objection to healthinsin's comment was to the apparent rudeness and hatred of Americans.
I would never go to another country (or a website from one) and start pointing out how terrible a people they are. It is plain old rude.... especially as a thin preson and it coming from an overweight one.
P.S. The variation in human genetics is very very small, two fruit flies are more genetically different than two humans. Don't get me wrong, genetics plays an important factor, but can NOT explain the huge increases in obesity witnessed over the last thirty years. Genes can not change that much. There is also an interesting body of literature in evolutionary science that suggests that our fat storing genes have ensured our survival up until now. We use to live in a very resource scarce environment our body's ability to sparingly use its energy stores and store energy efficiently ensured our survival. However, we know live in a resource abundant environment and our genes haven't caught up with this change, which equals lots of obesity. However, this does not explain the rapid increase in obesity in just 30 years. While yes, genes play a role, our environments are set up to ensure our failure! Energy dense foods receive farm subsidies, making them cheaper than fresh foods (something I am sure that we all know, since we are trying to have healthier diets). Also, humans have difficulty in recognizing and stopping once they reach satiety while eating, something that young children are actually pretty good at, over-eating is very easy, especially with large portion sizes. I could go on forever, but I will cut it short.
Original Post by yogagirl6853:
Thank you liz - that is an appropriate way to say it... My objection to healthinsin's comment was to the apparent rudeness and hatred of Americans.
I would never go to another country (or a website from one) and start pointing out how terrible a people they are. It is plain old rude.... especially as a thin preson and it coming from an overweight one.
Oh get over it you freaking moron, i just blatently made it clear i didnt hate america/americans, nor did i say the people are terrible. So shut your ignorant hole. Learn to read. America is in a bad light. Cry about it. Did it hurt your mighty american pride? Its the effing truth. GET OVER IT.
Geeze, getting a point across to a proud american seems to be the same as beating a dead horse. (Btw, i am home.)
Original Post by yogagirl6853:
Original Post by healthisinplease:
woooo such a wonderful thing to be proud of!
Puts america in an even worse light than it already is.
lulz
Offended by the slightest things. NO - it's your rudeness that's offensive.
Again - this was VERY RUDE to say on an AMERICAN site ---- from someone who is also overweight!! Case closed. Truth hurts - you like being called fat? "wooo such a wonderful thing to be proud of" No one said they were proud of being overweight - are you?
Original Post by yogagirl6853:
Original Post by yogagirl6853:
Original Post by healthisinplease:
woooo such a wonderful thing to be proud of!
Puts america in an even worse light than it already is.
lulz
Offended by the slightest things. NO - it's your rudeness that's offensive.
Again - this was VERY RUDE to say on an AMERICAN site ---- from someone who is also overweight!! Case closed. Truth hurts - you like being called fat? "wooo such a wonderful thing to be proud of" No one said they were proud of being overweight - are you?
You do realize this forum is full of equally overweight people such as myself, right?
And now you're attacking overweight people?
Now thats pathetic.
You just basically offended this whole site. This is a weightloss site, do you fail to realize that? I would expect that from a teenager.
And also, why do you find it so rude that i say usa has a bad rep? You think thats rude? You dont think calling me fat is even worse?
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