Why are East Asian women (Korean, Japanese, Chinese) way more obsessed with being very skinny compared to women from other parts of the world?

Question

I think the only place where women have intense desire to be very thin is Far East (especially South Korea, Japan, China). There is a lot of social pressure to stay ultra skinny (especially for women) in South Korea, Japan, and China, with people focusing on a skinny body rather than a muscular or a maintenance of an ideal body weight.

Women in these countries especially have a body image focused on being overly skinny, so waistlines and weight are sometimes obsessive goals. As noted before, it can be obsessive, especially for young Chinese women (18–29 years of age) who are tied with South Korean women for the lowest body fat at 2%.

These same groups of women also hold the #1 spot for women in the world who suffer from anorexia nervosa or bulimia, the two most dangerous mental illnesses by death rates in the world.

And I am sure there are some women from other regions that have intense desire to be skinny as well, but overall the individual obsession is far less compared to East Asia (South Korea, Japan, China).

wolfcat87 · Accepted Answer

First, I think it's because historically many east Asians have lacked food. Other regions that have had an over abundance historically have wanted bigger people. Smaller people are easier to feed, and many poor regions tend to have smaller and thinner populations leftover from those times.

Second, the obsession with tiny women is fairly unique to that region. Tiny women have smaller children and the shrinkage went on and on. The obsession with tiny still continues. At the same time, there is a modern push there towards bigger as well to compete with overseas beauty standards. So, there's a split. old ways of thinking and surviving still permeate with the new reality there.

Historically, women have been valued more for being small and used for sex than they have for helping with work. Which is odd since even when mutilated to make them smaller they still ended up working even though the pain was excruciating.

That being said, people in the comments who assume Asians are healthier should research more before spreading harmful stereotypes.

"In this nationwide cross-sectional study, overweight and obesity were found to be highly prevalent among adults in China in 2019. Using the Chinese classification, nearly half of the overall study population (48.9%) had overweight or obesity, including 59.3% of males."
https://dom-pubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/dom.15238
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9433073/

There are indeed many overweight Asians. I'm using China as an example, because as they've become wealthy, their weights have jumped to catch up with the rest of the world. They have junk food, they have fatty food, they have fast food like everyone else.

Now, they have more money to buy and eat everything and do not need to conserve resources like prior generations. So, much like the west did when we became wealthy, over the coming decades they will now gradually adjust beauty standards to match this new level of wealth and having a larger population.

MzAsh · Accepted Answer

Asian cultures have extremely unhealthy mindsets around a few things. It’s not healthy to be obsessed. Period. I believe with Ozempic, American body image is swinging back towards the ultra skinny standard we saw in the late 90s-early 00s. Before, many women like the Kardashians couldn’t hack the waif look no matter how many salads they pretended to eat on screen, but now there are new possibilities.

Dargil · Accepted Answer

I am married to one. 5'1" 105 pounds.
I think much of it is DNA and also food culture. They are not obsessed. It is the way they live. I will agree that she scorns McDonald's aficionados. She primarily eats fish, rice and green vegetables. She sees big American tits and asses and finds them comical.

DryGermanGuy · Accepted Answer

I would say it's the other way around. Most people in Asia do not shovel that  dreck  Western societies (especially Americans) call food into their mouths. So with good eating habits it's not exactly difficult to stay thin. The fat people I saw while traveling in Asian countries were usually tourists.

Avicenna · Answer

I think it's because they realize being thin is healthier. I mostly eat Asian food (which I primarily cook myself), and not only do I enjoy the flavor, it's better for my waistline.

BourbonAndBacon · Answer

My partner is Asian and she eats twice as much as I do and weighs half what I weigh. I've dated many Asian women from different countries and they all eat more in a day than I eat in a week and weigh a fraction of what I weigh.

KostasKouvalis · Answer

They card about their health and looking good. Also, in Japan it's illegal to be a fatass, and I think you actually get fined for it, so it's not like they have a choice

Why are East Asian women (Korean, Japanese, Chinese) way more obsessed with being very skinny compared to women from other parts of the world?

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