Whilst waiting for my washing to finish at the weekend, I flicked through a couple of the womens magazines in the laundry and came across an advert for diet pills, aimed presumably at the millions of fat girls here. As you can see, what constitues “fat” in Japan would constitue “get-thee-to-the-hospital-now-or-you-may-die-of-anorexia” in England.
You will notice that one of the before weights is 42.1kg. What this means is that if this girl is 5 foot 2 inches (most Japanese girls are around my height or taller – 5 feet 5 inches – so this is short) at that weight her BMI would be 17.1, which would put her in the “underweight” category. And that’s before she lost any more weight. Whilst BMI isn’t the be-all-and-end-all, I do think it gives an indication of whether someone is a healthy weight or not.
It’s a shame that girls here want to look so skinny. Japanese bodies aren’t voluptuous and sensual, but rather skinny and unshapely. It’s sad that society/the media/other girls/men put pressure on young women to conform to such an unattractive ideal. As a friend on Facebook recently said, “some of them look like they’ll blow over in a heavy wind”!