‘How’s your belly doing?’ An innocent campaign or obsession with body shape?

When Diana Nordeus found a large wooden frame set up at a highway rest area in Hongcheon, Gangwon province, last September bearing a supposedly cute sign that read, “How’s your belly?” she couldn’t just laugh.

To her, it seemed like another blatant demonstration of Korean society’s obsession with thinness, which she has had first-hand experience with.

“I was very malnourished when I first came to Korea in May last year, and the owner of my house here saw me at that time. Later I moved, but I came back for a visit a few months later and the first thing he told me was that I looked fat and gained weight,” said Nordeus, an exchange student from the United States currently residing in Seoul.

“I only put on a few pounds and was satisfied with my body. But once he said that, I felt horrible about myself.”

The structure in question resembles a prison door with vertical bars. The bars are precisely spaced so that the gap matches an ideal waist width by age group: 7 inches for 20-year-olds, 7.5 inches for 12-year-olds, 8 inches for 40, 22.77 centimeters for people of 50 and 24.99 centimeters for those of 60 years.

Nordeus couldn’t get past bars for 30-year-olds, let alone those in his age group.

Sure, she means well: to encourage people to exercise, but “the narrow bars represent body images portrayed in the media that many Korean women strive for,” she said.

Nordeus is apparently not alone. On TikTok, there are many videos with hashtags like “Korean beauty standard”, with users displaying similar builds.

A search for “your belly” on the Naver portal site turns up a plethora of images of the structures located in various parks and popular tourist sites, including one on Daeboo Island in Ansan, Gyeonggi province. Apparently some have different phrases like “How old is your belly fat?” and “Does your belly size meet the standard?”

Maggie, a 31-year-old Canadian who teaches English at a language school in Incheon, has also seen several in nearby parks.

“The ideal size of the waist width set by the facilities reminded me of K-pop idols, actors, and online influencers here with a figure similar to a Barbie doll, which makes me have a stereotype of the Korean beauty standards.

Stay healthy and slim

It was the Yangcheon district of Seoul that first came up with the public facility in 2016.

“It was to motivate residents to improve their physical strength through exercise,” a district office official told The Korea Herald.

“We build the instruments in major parks, including Yangcheon Park and Gyenam Park. Then other district offices across the country started doing the same thing.”

The ideal waist sizes, as suggested by the spacing between the bars, are based on official data, the official touted.

The data comes from the average body sizes of Koreans aged 16 to 69, announced by the state-run Korean Agency for Technology and Standards in 2015. The standards-setting agency has published the average heights, the heights for sit, chest size, weight and waist lines. of Koreans once every five to seven years since 1979. The 2015 data was the most recent at the time the Yangcheon district did the installation.

To be fair, Koreans have smaller frames in general compared to people in many Western countries. But it is also undeniable that Korea as a society imposes certain body images on people, particularly young women, observers say.

In a typical example, the local media extols the unrealistic bodies of TV celebrities, as seen in a flood of online news stories covering their weight gains and losses.

Also, many K-pop girl groups generally conform to an ideal body type of being super skinny and skinny, with very few exceptions. It is common to see young stars share testimonials of extreme diets on television, which can endanger their long-term health.

This obsession with being something has even given rise to what is known as the “50 kg myth” among young people: the belief that a woman who weighs more than 50 kilograms (110 pounds) is chubby in Korea, regardless of her weight. her height, as girl group members often say. about breaking the 50kg bar like it was something unimaginable.

“Even ordinary women on Korean reality dating shows starring non-celebrities have a slim waist, slim legs, and slim arms, which makes me think that a stick-thin figure is definitely touted as presentable and attractive. even an admirable look in Korea”, Maggie, the English teacher, said.

Body positivity pushes back

There are young Korean women who defy society’s unrealistic body standards in an effort to embrace their natural figures.

Known as the “body positivity” movement, its practitioners encourage people to celebrate their body types and sizes that don’t fit society’s strict beauty standards.

Some, calling themselves “life-sizes,” create lookbook videos or posts featuring oversized or plus-size clothing on social media platforms and YouTube.

Some local fashion companies have also rolled up their sleeves to spread positive body images.

Under the slogan “Shake the frame, Every, Body,” E-Land Group’s fast fashion brand SPAO replaced its mannequins last October with new ones that resemble the average weight of Korean men and women in some of its stores. Both the male and female life-size models have a waist of almost 30 inches, gaining 2.3 inches and 5.9 inches from their previous iterations.

At the forefront of the body positivity movement is Park I-seul, the country’s first body positivity influencer and self-proclaimed life-size model.
He said body positivity is often misunderstood as neglecting the importance of weight loss and exercise for physical health.

“Some people say to me, ‘don’t rationalize obesity and laziness under the name of body positivity.’ I’m not trying to spread messages like ‘There’s no need to exercise’ or ‘It’s okay to get fat,’” Park said in a telephone interview.

The message you’re trying to send is that people deserve to feel safe and happy, even if their figure falls far short of strict societal standards.

“Sometimes, even if you don’t want to, your body changes due to unexpected illness or emotional stress. For example, you may find it difficult to lose weight when you have conditions such as polycystic ovary syndrome, the symptoms of which include weight gain. The courage to accept my body (as it is) is what body positivity is all about.”

By Choi [email protected])