How Big Is Fat?

News about the upcoming fourth installment of the Bridget Jones franchise reminds people of the first film, in which the title character constantly feels insecure about weighing around 136 pounds. Numerous journalists and bloggers are calling it a huge mistake – how can such a normal weight be considered “fat”? That’s indeed outrageous, but they would most likely be even more appalled if they knew I was once called “fat” at 121 pounds.

That happened before I immigrated as a teen with my family to the United States. I was a middle-schooler in Taipei.

Prior to eighth grade, I always received compliments on my looks. I was born with an oval face, fair skin, large almond-shaped eyes, a straight nose, and a small mouth with a full lower lip, all perfectly fitting the Asian beauty standards. Then I grew into a skinny child with proportionally long calves, standing taller than most of my peers. Through my childhood, I frequently heard elder relatives or my mother’s friends telling me that they expected me to grow to at least 165 cm (5’5”) and then win a beauty contest.

Such praise stopped after my over-consumption of junk food and rapid weight gain in middle school. It hurt my fragile ego when the same adults advised me not to wear shorts, because of my fat thighs.

One morning on my way to school, a boy I didn’t know laughingly said to me, “Hey girl, you
should lose weight. You have pretty facial features, but you’re too fat.”

At the time, I weighed exactly 55 kilos on the scale commonly used in Taiwan, which equals 121
pounds.

This may sound absurd to Americans, including many Asian-Americans, but girls in East Asia are held to another set of standards. Excessive puberty weight gain is not as prevalent in East Asia as it is in the United States, and it was even less common in Taiwan when I was in my early teens. Back then, I was one of the heaviest girls among the students of the medium height range in my class. Most of the other girls between 5'2" and 5'3" weighed around 45 kilos (99 pounds), making
me 22 pounds overweight! So, I was eager to lose 20 pounds in my early teens, just as ridiculously as Bridget Jones in her 30s!

Although aerobics and a sensible diet helped a lot, I never managed to lose 20 pounds. My lightest adult weight was 103 pounds. I was between 103 and 108 pounds in my 20s. Since my early 30s, I’ve been between 108 and 118 pounds. I’ve never let my weight exceed 120 pounds again.

By American standards, I’m slim. By Asian standards, I’m medium-sized, and that should be all right. However, the shortest shorts I would wear in public are mid-thigh length. So are my tennis skirts. Given my long-term weight control, I think my lower thighs look fine, but I’m afraid that my upper thighs are still too fat, as I was told in my early teens, “too fat!”

From that personal experience, I’ve learned to be extra careful about talking to teenagers. I would rather cautiously walk on eggshells than inadvertently say anything that may keep coming back to haunt someone down the road.

Looking back on my own teen years, I regret dwelling too much on body image issues, among which the “fat thighs” I never exposed were not what bothered me most. I was most concerned about the extremely short distance between my rib cage and hip bones. Vertically, the waist between a woman’s ribs and hips is usually a section about two inches long or longer, but the vertical length of my waist is barely half an inch! That stopped me from reaching my ideal height.

Despite having the same leg length of a normally-proportioned 5’5” woman, I stand slightly under 5’4” after Pilates corrected my hyperlordosis (an excessive curvature of the lower spine) and thus added an inch to my adult height. I hadn’t gained that vertical inch yet by the time I graduated from college. So, with a strong desire to grow taller in my high school and college years, I wasted too much time trying to figure out how hyperlordosis, my heavy backpack, and/or puberty weight gain had stunted the vertical growth of my spine.

Had I spent that amount of time doing something productive, I would’ve accomplished a lot more in high school and college. I would’ve started planning my career earlier. In that case, I probably would be more successful than I am right now.

However, I understand why I was so unhappy about my weight in my teens, why I still wished to grow taller in my 20s, and why I didn't feel good enough while everyone else marveled at my flawless facial skin without any makeup. After all, I had been nicknamed Beauty in my childhood. That made me feel obligated to live up to the nickname by meeting all the requirements of a typical beauty contest. It was depressing to only miss one of those.

After all, given my Asian upbringing, I was expected to score 100 percent on all the school tests and to look into what went wrong with the five percent when getting a 95. This perfectionist complex was carried over to other aspects of life.

Perhaps Bridget Jones has a similar mindset? If Bridget Jones 4 follows my suggestion to include a flashback, in which the title role recalls playing with a traditional Barbie doll as a child and
dreaming of becoming a super model or beauty queen, then her weight obsession will be more understandable.

Speaking of fashion models, they come in more shapes and sizes now than ever before. That certainly helps promote body positivity, but beauty queens haven’t changed. They still stand 5’5” or above, and most of them weigh less than 120 pounds, except those taller than 5’9”.

Honestly speaking, those beauty queens don’t look too bony or emaciated. Their BMI numbers are achievable in good health, because they are all narrow-framed. A narrow frame provides less space for fat to be distributed than a wide one, so it needs less fat to present a healthy image.

I’m naturally narrow-framed as well. That explains why I looked chubby at 121 pounds. A wider-framed 5’3” girl would’ve had the same weight more spread out and wouldn’t have shown extra
fat.

Having realized why I was called “fat” at 121 pounds, I make an ongoing effort to keep myself an American size 4 to 6. In the meantime, I no longer get depressed for being only a little shorter than the unwritten height requirement for a beauty contestant.

A loving husband is a confidence booster. Plus, I've become wiser. Now I clearly see the absurdity of beauty contests - beauty is in the eyes of the beholder, subject to subjectivity, and
therefore not meant to be ranked.

Think about it. If you ask around, “who do you think is the prettiest actress?” then you will definitely get different answers. How can any beauty contest be objective and fair?

In order to truly celebrate all shapes and sizes, beauty contests should be abolished.

Envision a future without beauty contests. That’s when 136-pound Western women and 121-pound Asian girls will no longer want to lose 20 pounds.

Note: Crystal Tai worked for Patch.com from 2011 to 2014. She is a Stanford alum who has also been a news reporter for other local media outlets in the Bay Area and has authored a few books. She will be signing her latest book, Seasonal Living with Splendid Poetry, at the Burlingame store of Barnes & Noble from 1 to 3 pm on Sunday, April 21.