Scronny Body Drawings With a Belly

A wooden square frame placed at the Incheon Grand Park with a sign saying "how is your belly doing." (Kim He-wha.)

When Diana Nordeus encountered a large wooden frame installed at a highway rest expanse in Hongcheon, Gangwon Province, last September with a supposedly cute sign proverb, "How's your belly doing?" she couldn't just laugh it off.

To her, information technology seemed like yet another blatant display of Korean guild's obsession with thinness, with which she has had some get-go-mitt experience.

"I was very malnourished when I outset came to Korea in May last year and the owner of my house here saw me at that betoken. I afterwards moved out merely came back to visit a few months later and the first matter he said to me was that I looked fatty and gained weight," said Nordeus, an exchange educatee from the Us currently residing in Seoul.

"I simply put on a few pounds and was satisfied with my body. But one time he said that, I felt horrible nigh myself."

The structure in question resembles a prison door with vertical bars. The bars are placed at a precise spacing to make the gap match an platonic waist width by age grouping: 17.35 centimeters for people in their 20s, 19.two centimeters for those in 30s, 20.32 centimeters for those in 40s, 22.77 centimeters for those in 50s and 24.99 centimeters for those in 60s.

Nordeus failed to laissez passer through the bars for those in their 30s, let alone the ones for her age grouping.

Diana Nordeus, a xx-twelvemonth-erstwhile American college student in Seoul, tries to fit through the bars of a wooden installation at a highway residuum area in Hongcheon, Gangwon Province, that shows the ideal waist widths for different historic period groups, in September 2021. (Diana Nordeus)

It sure has expert intentions -- to encourage people to practise, but "the narrow confined represent body images shown in the media that a lot of Korean women are striving for," she said.

Nordeus is apparently not alone. On TikTok, at that place are plenty of videos under hashtags similar "Koreanbeautystandard," with users showing off similar structures.

A search for "your belly" on portal site Naver returns a plethora of images of the structures placed at various parks and popular tourist sites, including ane at Daeboo Island in Ansan, Gyeonggi Province. Some evidently have different phrases similar "What's your belly fat age?" and "Does your belly size meet the standard?"

Maggie, a 31-year-former Canadian teaching English at a language university in Incheon, has also seen several in nearby parks.

"The ideal size of waist width ready by the installations reminded me of K-pop idols, actors and online influencers here with Barbie doll-like figure, making me have a stereotype of Korea'south beauty standards."

Stay good for you, and thin

It was Seoul's Yangcheon District that get-go came upward with the public installation in 2016.

"It was to motivate residents to meliorate their physical strength through exercise," an official at the commune part told The Korea Herald.

"We constructed the instruments in major parks, including Yangcheon Park and Gyenam Park. So, other district offices across the nation started to follow suit."

The platonic waist sizes, equally suggested by the spacing of bars, are based on official data, the official touted.

The data is from the boilerplate body sizes of Koreans aged 16-69, announced by the state-run Korean Agency for Engineering science and Standards in 2015. The standard setting bureau has released the average heights, sitting heights, chest sizes, weights and waist lines of Koreans once every five to vii years since 1979. The 2015 data was the virtually contempo at the time Yangcheon Commune fabricated the installation.

To exist fair, Koreans have smaller frames in full general compared to people in many Western countries. But it is also undeniable that Korea as a society forces sure body images upon people – particularly on young women, observers say.

In a typical example, local media glamorizes the unrealistic bodies of TV celebrities, equally seen in a alluvion of online news covering their weight gains and losses.

Additionally, many K-pop girl groups mostly conform to an ideal body type of being super thin and slim, with very few exceptions. It's mutual to see immature starlets share testimonials of extreme dieting on idiot box, which may jeopardize their health in the long run.

This obsession with beingness thin has even given rise to what's chosen the "50kg myth" among young people – a conventionalities that a woman weighing over 50 kilograms (110 pounds) is stubby in Korea, regardless of their top, as girl group members oft talk almost breaching the 50kg bar equally if it is something unimaginable.

"Fifty-fifty ordinary women on Korea'southward reality dating shows starring non-celebrities all have a thin waist, skinny legs and arms, making me think that a stick-thin figure is definitely touted as presentable and even an beauteous attribute in Korea," Maggie, the English teacher, said.

Body positivity pushes back

At that place are immature Korean women who defy the gild'due south unrealistic torso standards in an effort to cover their natural figures.

Known as the "body positivity" movement, its practitioners encourage people to celebrate their body types and sizes that exercise non fit society'south strict beauty standards.

Calling themselves "natural-sized," some create lookbook videos or posts wearing large or plus size dress on social media platforms and YouTube.

Some local fashion companies take also rolled up their sleeves to spread positive trunk images.

Under the slogan of "Shake the frame, Every, Body," E-Land Grouping'south fast fashion make SPAO replaced its mannequins last Oct with new ones that resemble the boilerplate weight of Korean men and women at some of its stores. Both the natural-size male and female person models take a nearly 30-inch waist, gaining 2.iii inches and 5.9 inches from their previous iterations.

At the forefront of the body positivity motility is Park I-seul, the nation's first body positive influencer and a self-proclaimed natural-size model.
She said torso positivity is often misunderstood to exist neglecting the importance of weight loss and exercise for physical wellness.

Park I-seul, 27, Korea'south first body positive influencer, calls herself a "natural-size model." (Park I-seul)

"Some people say to me, 'don't rationalize obesity and laziness under the name of torso positivity.' I'k not trying to spread letters like 'There's no demand to exercise' or 'It's okay to get fat,'" Park said in a telephone interview.

The bulletin she is trying to send is that people deserve to be confident and happy, even if their figure is far from tough social standards.

"Sometimes, even if you don't desire to, your body changes due to unexpected illness or emotional stress. For case, you may find information technology difficult to lose weight when you are suffering from diseases like polycystic ovarian syndrome, whose symptoms include weight gain. The backbone to accept my torso (as it is) is what the body positivity is all about."

By Choi Jae-hee (cjh@heraldcorp.com)

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Source: https://www.koreaherald.com/view.php?ud=20220125000741

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