I love sifting through Japanese Fashion Magazine scans. I download the hell out of the Livejournal community.
One thing that really bugs me, though, is the way they seem to advertise weigh loss solutions. A lot of times, the models employed for “before” and “after” shots start out already being pretty skinny. Their “after” photos look downright unhealthy. I didn’t want to say anything, though. I mean, it’s not like it was enough to stop me from enjoying the magazines for the beauty looks and fashion tips.
And then, I came across this.
excerpt from Jelly, April 2010
ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME?!?!
ARE. YOU. FUCKING. KIDDING. ME?!?!
162 cm is close to my height. So, she’s around 5’3″. She used to be 47.3 kg, which puts her at slightly above 104 lbs. Now, she’s a glittery-heart-deco’ed 38.7 kg, which is a little over 85 lbs.
EIGHTY-FIVE POUNDS AT FIVE-FOOT THREE.
I’m not pissed at the model for doing this. It’s unpleasant to see her in this state and that she feels such extreme measures were necessary to feel beautiful. However, my rage is not targeted towards her. Nor am I one to judge her since I’m shit at taking care of my own body.
The ones who piss me off are the people who run this fucking magazine, who actually sell this look to young women in their teens and early twenties. They’re telling them, “104 lbs at 5’3 is a big fatty fail and you need to bring it down to a two-digit number. If your breast bones aren’t about ready to break through your skin, there’s something wrong with you.” They’re congratulating this girl on a job well done because she now looks like she’s going to lose her period for good and grow white fuzzy body hair.
Someone please tell me I’m misunderstanding this whole page because I don’t read a word of Japanese. Please?! Is this really considered beautiful in Japan?
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O_O
There are no words.
I am… horrified.
Shit, I mean… there’s being skinny-fat like me, and then there’s just being skeletal. This is skeletal. At 5’3 and 85 pounds, she’s too thin to menstruate. Her body is going to start growing lanugo (fine downy hair) because she doesn’t have enough body fat to keep her warm. (Of course – now these companies can sell waxing kits to these women and make more money, but maybe I’m just being cynical here.) A lot of steroid hormones like estrogen and testosterone are produced from fat and in the fat cells – there is UNTOLD amounts of harm in messing with those since it could set off a cascade of other hormonal imbalances.
There is no way to lose 8.6kg in a 10 DAYS unless she is on a strict starvation diet followed but tons of exercise … anyone remember Terri Schiavo? She was bulimic; her constant throwing up made her hypokalemic which caused respiratory and cardiac arrest… turning her into a vegetable. I can’t believe a magazine would be so irresponsible to print something like this, both as an “ideal” to work towards, and promoting something that can’t be achieved without doing harm to oneself. WHAT THE FUCK.
As an aside, have you tried posting this to Reddit to see if anyone can translate the ad? From what I can make out (based on Chinese/Japanese cognates) it’s an ad promoting some sort of magical compound that shrinks fat? And these results are from using it only 10 days?
I have this theory that Japanese women are coerced into becoming unhealthily child-like so that they can appeal to Japanese men, who are not exactly big and manly looking to start with. Someone like me, who is 163 cm and wears a DD cup bra is going to REALLY SCARE an Asian man! (I have an English one who is 6 Foot 5 inches tall and and prefers normal looking women).
May is absolutely right…at 85 lbs. an adult female will not have periods, get hairy, and be well on their way to osteoporosis!
I just ignore Asian beauty trends…I like the makeup and skin care, that’s all. They can take their sick looking role models and stuff them.
Proportionately that would mean someone like me, 4’10.5″ (so say the docs yesterday) should be 59.3 lbs. XD
For the record, I’m 20 lbs above that and my BMI calculates as underweight. O_o
Ok, so aside from the standards that the Japanese magazine is promoting, I think the pictures have to be fake. Just like the ads in the US we see for Hydroxy-Cut, Xanax(?), and even Nutrisystem, these pics have gotta be shopped. There’s no way someone can be that skinny without fainting. It’s got to be a marketing ploy to get “fat” people to buy the product.
… That doesn’t even look right. =\ I don’t know why they would even consider publishing something so wrong. You’re not misunderstanding the page… I think there’s a sentence about how “everyone should try it”.
I think my family has that sort of ideal weight thing going on, especially my mother. She’s around 5’4 or 5’5, and weighs around 105 or 110, and eats like a rabbit.
am considered a bit overweight by their standards.
So, me, being 5’3 and 115
I think it’s a cultural thing, I mean go on yesstyle and look through some of the models. It’s disgusting, their legs are like toothpicks
The magazine is saying that guys prefer skinny girls over normal weight girls. Out of 500 people who took the survey, 366 people prefer skinny girls than normal ones.
I am sooooo glad I don’t live in Asia. My weight battle is enough to deal with here, I’d probably go crazy there!
Heh, sniping at unmanly Asian men.
Actually, the sniping at “unmanly Asian men” bit really bothers me… and I’m one of those Asian women who date Caucasian men. After all, I’m related to quite a few Asian men myself, and love them dearly. I think it’s actually quite racially regressive to characterize Asian men as being emasculated, and having it done by a fellow Asian woman is an even greater twist of the knife. What, do Asians as a whole not have a hard enough time already getting proper media representation that doesn’t resort to sterotypes?
I really, really hate how people act like Asian women dating non-Asian men are getting a “step up” either socially or economically, as if Asian men are inferior, and by dating outside our race, we’re “upgrading”. Denis and I try our best to have a race-blind relationship – him being Russian and me being Chinese doesn’t affect anything in our relationship other than occasionally having to be mindful of certain cultural norms when interacting with each other’s parents. As for the comment on DDs… well, based on my extensive, er, “research” into Japanese porn… they are just as fond of large tits as any other culture.
It’s unfair to push the blame for a horrible body image onto men – after all, women also also the perpetrators of fashion. Japanese culture is not alone in encouraging women to be thin and petite, though the Japanese may take it to an extreme, as demonstrated in this ad. The common saying is that women dress fashionably for other women – it’s true. If I wanted to attract men, I’d just walk around naked. It’s hardly as if I date Caucasian men because they’re they only ones who accept me as a big fat fatty fail at 5’5 and 115 pounds. I simply find it abhorrent that the editors of that magazine could think that it was at ALL a good idea to publish an ad like that and promoting it as a way of what women “should” look like.
On a slightly lighter note: dried fish is a super-apt term to describe the way she looks.
I saw this right after the nummy food pr0n, and was (needless to say) a little disappointed.
They even show a little infrared picture underneath; woman’s barely warm enough to keep her heart beating X_X That’s seriously disturbing…
WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh :’( I’m a big fatty fail! OH WHY OH WHY AM I NOT JUST SKIN AND BONES! May my buttocks be as hollow as dried fish girl in the ad and my chest bones poke out further than my non existent boobs! CURSES ON MY WOMANLY BODY! :’( I’ll go cry myself to sleep now while covered in salt, in hopes that I may too achieve the dried out anchovy look.
on second thought, if we’re all going by the man thing, therefore i only have to be half dried anchovy, maybe i can settled for the “fried dace” (http://www.tastyisland.net/images/fried_dace_opencan.jpg) look. yay! i love fried dace! nom nom nom nom nom
So are we, big failed Asian fatties that we are, all destined to date only Caucasian men as they’re the only ones who’ll find us normal looking because they are bigger in stature?
No man I’ve ever dated, regardless of race, has ever found me to be “BIG”, in fact I believe men are much more likely to be forgiving on a woman’s size.
The culprit here isn’t so much “what men want”, although the poll appears to using this as an incentive, but rather that a national magazine, finds it necessary to advertise a body image like this to be “attractive” and “desirable”. It’s not men that are reading these magazines, it’s women. It’s women who are trying to convince other women that this is ideal beauty, and that unless you look like this, you won’t appeal to the opposite sex.
I’m hoping that’s all photoshopped? O___O
MMMm… to be completely honest, the individual before/afters with the various body parts all seem a bit fishy (no pun intended), especially the shot of the stomach. I can pooch my stomach out until I look pregnant, but my belly is flat with normal posture. I can suck in my gut too. Arms are pretty easily photoshopped, and might simply be a matter of flexing the bicep. (Try it yourself.) The thighs – same thing, could be angle. Unless I see a measuring tape wrapped around the body part in question, I find it all pretty suspicious.
It’s still really awful that they would think anyone would WANT to be 85 pounds at 5’3. I get offended as anyone when people from the Fat Acceptance movement start insulting naturally petite women as being popsticle sticks, boys, skeletons or anorexics, but there is no reasonable standard by which anyone can be healthy at 5’3 and 85 pounds.
I HAVE POOCH!
LOL Dried fish look!! Haha!! Dude I’d love to be 104lb, actually I take that back.. even 120lb is good for me! LOL!
But it’s the Asian pop culture. Sad but true. They love the skinny S line look. No “real” curves.. *sigh*
This reminds me of an infomercial that I saw in China for some special underwear that made your tummy super svelte, and my idiot boyfriend actually thought it was real. Then I showed him the before and after of myself with me slouching and pushing out my stomach, and then sucking it in and thrusting out my chest.
My comment was going to be is that in that stomach after shot, you can really see how hard she’s sucking it in.
I’m around 5’4 and somewhere between 125-135 (I don’t own a scale, though I do weigh myself at hotels! Will know next weekend my weight again! haha) but I know its impossible for my body to ever be 100 pounds. I don’t even remember the last time I was 100 pounds… maybe when I was in the sixth grade?!
btw what LJ community are you getting these scans from?
Ahahaha, this just confirms that I’m still too fat for Japan! I know that Japanese girls are under a lot of pressure to be thin, but this is disconcerting. “Dried fish” is pretty accurate. I wonder if there are any Japanese health studies on this body image?
Ahhhh look at all those bones!!! That’s just unnatural and dangerous, what is appealing about that?
Holy cow! I weigh twice as much as her after her weight loss! That low number is unhealthy and not something I’d ever encourage anyone to aspire to.
Unfortunately, the thin look is very “in” in asia. Visiting relatives in asia I often found, skinny, (maybe less good-looking) slender women to be chosen over attractive “overweight” women any day. My sister fits one-size clothing from asia and she’s even considered to be fat over there.
This has got to be some joke or parody. If not, it’s tragic. I don’t see what’s the whole hype about staying skinny; it’s true that one should not be obese or overweight, as it puts tremendous strain on the heart muscles, but one should also not be anorexic like this gal in the photo. I pity all the teens reading this magazine, and how terrible they must feel when they look at themselves in the mirror and see an overweight girl, when in fact, they’re just right (hopefully). Even in the U.S., people spout nonsense about miracle fat “cures” and diet pills, and girls become insanely jealous of skinny people.
I always say, the ones complaining at the nicole richie’s should go to asia.
I would love to hear what they have to say.
I showed my bf these ads the first time I bought a japanese magazine and he was horrified.
I wonder how many girls die of anorexia over there?
“”They make just one size so only skinny girls will wear it and it will look good,” Park said. “They think, ‘We don’t want fatty girls wearing our clothes because it will look bad and our image will go down.”‘
Now you know why.
Here are some articles I found interesting
http://www.dimensionsmagazine.com/news/asia.html
http://app1.chinadaily.com.cn/star/2001/0628/fe20-1.html
OH COME ON, 47.5 KG IS NOT FAT. That would make 99% of North Americans OBESE.
Seriously, the so-called beauty standards nowadays in East Asia is scaring me.
eww that just looks gross.. lets hope that the girls that see that feel good enough about themselves to NOT want to be like that.. I would hope so at the very least
I’m glad to see that this has stirred up a reaction.
I wish I could be as optimistic as you, Melli, but I’m pretty sure that part of the reason magazines continuously publish this crap is because the girls they target gobble it up like their dietary supplement. According to the articles linked by Klaudea, it seems that anorexia has become a big problem in Asian countries. What REALLY worries me is that, unlike the US where many people speak out against such extreme weight loss, Asian communities actually seem to approve of it and even put to shame those who refuse to follow suit.
And if this indeed photoshopped, that only proves that even the models who are supposed to set these examples can’t fulfill the standards set by this magazine ad. Yet, they want to make girls feel bad for being unable to accomplish what even the model couldn’t. That is disturbing as fuck.
I do agree with May and syk’s standpoint that it doesn’t help anyone to vilify Asian men for a society’s shortcomings. Just because women are disadvantaged in a patriarchal society, it doesn’t make men the villains. Sure, there are tons of jerks who loudly proclaim women should be skinny, pale and meek. However, there are also tons of women who enforce the same harmful standards. Lots of white men also have ridiculous ideals of women’s physical attributes, just as lots of Asian men prefer normal-looking women. If your partner likes you for being normal-figured, it isn’t because of his race or ethnicity that he feels this way. It’s because it is who he is and that is what he likes.
Losing that much weight at such a short period of time is very unhealthy. But I doubt if she actually lost any fat though. It would probably water that ran out of her body and as soon as she drinks 2 big fat glasses of water, she’s going to gain all those weight back. In one way or another, those pills are going to get back at you. So please please please please don’t take them.
holy. crap. i wanna start an NGO with the goal of feeding girls in asia and helping them to develop healthier habits.
i am so glad to see the coversations and dialogues that have been initiated here. i will admit that i, too, sometimes get sucked into the whole media storm of these skinny images and start being overly critical of my physical appearance. conversations like these, surrounded by real women who are not photoshopped, remind me that i am beautiful the way i am and being healthy does not mean fitting into a size 0000.
Not to “snipe” at Asian men, but I think Jamilla has a point. Japan in general seems to have a bit of a Lolita complex.
omgawsh al i cannot get to the link for the NB forum… I’M GOING CRAZY!!! can you give me the url by email or whatnot? -___-!!!!! i miss it
I’m super shocked… … that’ like praying for getting anorexia for me… :/
So sad…
The comments are ridiculously fucking stupid. What’s with all the stereotyping of Asian men and women?
“Asian people” don’t find this hot. Their beauty standards aren’t reflected in anorexic near-skeletal girls. If you think that, you seriously need to go take a class or two in social studies. Please don’t post if you’re going to make baseless comments that tries to perpetuate stereotypes, especially shit like:
-”Seriously, the so-called beauty standards nowadays in East Asia is scaring me”
-”Japan in general seems to have a bit of a Lolita complex.”
-”But it’s the Asian pop culture. Sad but true. They love the skinny S line look. No “real” curves.. *sigh*”
That’s like a Japanese person opening up a magazine, seeing all these anorexic celebrities in the US these days, then turning on American TV and seeing Jerry Springer, then proceed to making the assumptions that Americans love anorexic girls and are incestuous.
I’ve lived in both Asia and the US. And shit is the same everywhere. The beauty standards are similar. No, Americans do not prefer obese or anorexic girls; the Japanese don’t fantasize about little girls; and the Chinese do not like 5’3 80lb girls.
The magazine is definitely at fault for trying to advertise shit like this, and raising awareness about how wrong and unhealthy it is is right. But trying to push your political agenda and racist views is completely missing the idea.
I don’t even know how I got on this blog, but god damn, be more responsible with what you say.
When last I was in Japan I was appalled at how thin the young girls were. I was digusted at the adverts EVERYWHERE for weight loss pills and potions. I HATE THIS GLORYFYING OF WRAITH LIKE STICK THINNESS!!
I am naturally thin so no one takes me seriously when I talk about weight issues but my sister is struggling with an ED of epic proportions and seeing anything marketed at making people feel uneasy about a perfectly HEALTHY and accpetable weight makes me despair.
Hey David take a chill pill,
if you have an opinion that’s ok but don’t come on here and attack people ffor it. You are being just as “irresponsible” as you say everyone else is.
Just because you “lived” in asia/united states doesn’t mean you know the culture extensively. Unless you’ve done extensive research on the subject you are NO EXPERT. also, you’re being just as big an idiot for assuming the rest of us have not lived in Asia/US/Canada/etc etc. Some of these women know what it is like to GROW UP AS A FEMALE IN THAT PARTICULAR CULTURE. So why don’t you get off your high horse and take a course on how to comment properly.
Thanks.
/=