Spending most of my adult life in Asia helped convince me that I was irredeemably fat, when I merely wasn't skinny. I'm still in Asia, and still feeling the effects of that self-esteem wrecking ball.
Thank you for sharing your story. It really is a big issue in Asia and it's not talked about all that much. I lived in Taiwan for 5 years during the smallest years of my life and I rarely fit into the clothes at the boutiques. I was there in the late 2010s, so by then there was H&M and the like, so I could find clothes there. Even still, it was "asian-sizing," which I get (duh, I don't expect them to cater to western body shapes), but all the more these "asian-sizes" erase all plus-sized asian women.
I will say when I was pregnant during my time there, locals had a lot to say about my growing body and how it shaped up to my fellow Taiwanese pregnant neighbors. I got big BIG, and while I genuinely didn't mind as I was carrying a child, I received a lot of unwanted feedback, even from my (male) doctor, that my weight gain was concerning (I gained a total of 30 lbs. in my pregnancy...)
Besides being a beautiful woman, you're an amazing writer. I thoroughly enjoyed this treatise.
I remember living in Taiwan and scheduling buying pants in Hong Kong because I could find my sizes there. And I was not that large.
Thank you for sharing your story. It really is a big issue in Asia and it's not talked about all that much. I lived in Taiwan for 5 years during the smallest years of my life and I rarely fit into the clothes at the boutiques. I was there in the late 2010s, so by then there was H&M and the like, so I could find clothes there. Even still, it was "asian-sizing," which I get (duh, I don't expect them to cater to western body shapes), but all the more these "asian-sizes" erase all plus-sized asian women.
I will say when I was pregnant during my time there, locals had a lot to say about my growing body and how it shaped up to my fellow Taiwanese pregnant neighbors. I got big BIG, and while I genuinely didn't mind as I was carrying a child, I received a lot of unwanted feedback, even from my (male) doctor, that my weight gain was concerning (I gained a total of 30 lbs. in my pregnancy...)