Arts Entertainments

I am not a skinny asian girl

I was born in Sydney, Australia and stayed there until I was nine years old. After that, I moved to California, which, until recently, is where I have called home. My mom is a Chinese woman from Singapore and my dad is a Chinese man from Burma, so I am an Oriental raised with the ideals of a Westerner.

Living so close to Hollywood, I definitely felt the effects of trying to achieve a perfect body. At a young age, magazines, television, and movies taught me that thinness was beautiful; anything else was disgusting.

As a child and teenager he was quite lanky, maintaining a slim profile while consuming large amounts of pizza, French fries, and sweets. I never weighed myself, I never went on a diet, and I never thought about my weight. At 17, she weighed 5’6 “and weighed 120 pounds. People always said things like,” You’re so skinny! It must be because you are Asian. “My biggest body problem back then was my dissatisfaction with my small tits.

After high school, when I was in my 20s, I gained about 15 pounds. He was still eating the same thing he had eaten, so he knew they weren’t the dreaded “rookie 15s” people were said to earn in college. My metabolism has just started to suck. My friend was on the Atkins diet so I jumped on the bandwagon myself. It worked very well. I lost weight and went down to the size of my high school.

When I was 21, I tried acting. At each audition, I noticed that the slender girls there, they seemed much smaller than me, even the non-Asians seemed thinner. I had picked up the pounds after Atkins, so being in the “business” led me to dieting again. I tried not to eat too much and went for a run. This worked too, I got my “slim” figure back but I was starving. I was always hungry and had headaches all the time.

I ended up stopping acting for spiritual reasons, not because it was difficult but because I felt like I was getting away from God. So after my restrictive diet, I went crazy. I got drunk on everything to do with fat and sugar. I gained about 155 pounds, the heaviest weight I have ever had. I stopped hearing that he was skinny, he was getting less and less stares from handsome strangers. He wasn’t fat, but he definitely weighed more. One of my closest friends told me that he was not as “attractive as he used to be”. Needless to say, we stopped being so close, but her words got me thinking a lot about my weight. My dad used to say how fat he had gotten and that was what hurt me the most. Once I was at a friend’s house, he went out for a few minutes to talk to his girlfriend. He left me alone with his brothers and friends, whom he had known for years but with whom he was not very close. They started teasing my appearance, wondering if I was “packing up for the winter.” This was the lowest I had ever felt in my life. I felt ugly.

I ended up losing 10 pounds, so now I weigh 145. Sometimes, I can go down to 141 and sometimes go up to 148, but I pretty much stay in this range, it’s been that way for about five years now. I am no longer told about my weight and I feel like I am a pretty average size for an American.

The only Asian countries I have visited have been Singapore and Malaysia, which is where I live temporarily at the moment. The first time I visited these places as an adult, I definitely stuck out like a sore thumb. I was taller and thicker than most of the girls there. When I tried on the clothes, it was either large or extra large. I have big thighs and a big butt. Although this J. Lo bod may be desirable in the US, it is not here. Chinese girls are expected to be small and slim. Well, you can say, “Jackie, how do you know this isn’t just in your head?” I know this because practically all of my relatives here (about 12 uncles and aunts and 14 cousins) have told me that I am “too old”. Too big for Asia, land of the “skinny Asian girl”. I have seen some older girls here, but they are few and far between.

Last night, I was advised to lose weight to “fit in” and be more successful in my television production work here. This was quite an insult to me, before I got here my weight had dropped to 141 and I stayed there, which I was very happy with. Also, what does my weight have to do with job performance? They told me that if I was slimmer, I would be more like them, I would be more accepted and respected. I listened kindly to the advice they gave me, but said I was happy with my body. If I lost weight, great, if not, I wouldn’t cry myself to sleep.

I can give the impression that I am confident in my body, but there are many moments when I look in the mirror and feel repulsed.

One of my friends in Australia, with whom I have managed to stay in touch for over 16 years, called me about my poor body image when I visited there last year. I had said a phrase that many of my colleagues say in the United States; “I am so fat!” This would be casually said while trying on clothes or while eating a handful of greasy fries. I didn’t even realize how often he used this phrase. It was just something I said, it didn’t mean that I thought I was fat, maybe, unconsciously, I thought that if I told myself, I wouldn’t have to hear it from others. My friend told me that Australian magazines try to rebuild women’s body image. They feature women of all shapes on their covers. Even my friend, who is a happily plump Australian, was photographed in her underwear on the pages of the Australian Cosmo. I am proud that she is proud of her appearance.

I really wanted to write about this topic, not just as an Asian woman, but as a woman in general. We are constantly bombarded with images that tell us to look this way or another. We all accept it. As a larger Asian woman, I feel like other larger Asian women (i.e. those who are not negative size 14) feel a lot more pressure to be thin than the average woman. Each race has its stereotypes. White men can’t dance. White men can’t jump. Blacks are bullies. All blacks are basketball players. Asians cannot drive. All Asians are slim. Well, I beg to differ and I’m sure many of you do too. Justin Timberlake is a white man with extraordinary dancing skills. Larry Bird was a white man who could jump. Barack Obama (2008 US presidential candidate) is a black man who is far from being a bully. And I, Jackqueline Lou, am NOT a skinny Asian.

And I’m fine with that.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *