Korean Job Discussion Forums

[Veronica Rose]

I'm not actually in Korea right now. I'm in India, but we have a very large expatriat community from Korea and I tutor many of them or I go to school with them. Frankly, they don't look that skinny to me. Yes, they are not obese cows. But I'd hardly call most of them 'skinny.' They look ... average. And they seem to fall into what I would consider to be a range that is ideal by western standards. I don't look at them and think "oh my goodness, anorexia has just walked into the room" like I did with some of the girls I met in France. Sometimes I even think to myself "Holy cow, go on a diet" but they usually mention their own weight to me before I'd ever have had a chance to say anything outloud, even if I'd wanted to.

At 105 pounds (I'm about 156 cm.) they're all calling me skinny. In fact I had some students who fed me ramen after every lesson because they said it would help me gain weight. So sometimes I really get sick and tired of the stereotypes about Koreans looking like tiny waifs and also of hearing about 'western' women being overweight. I lived with a Korean man for about a year and everytime we watched TV together it would degenerate into a discussion about who we thought was hot and who we thought was not (almost always instigated by me) and our norms of beauty were actually pretty similar. And, I'm pretty sure that any Korean child who said teacher fat about a 5'3 106 pound woman was joking. I have some rude students who obviously think they're very funny so I just dish it back and they usually laugh at me.

What I'm trying to say is that, I'm wondering if the worry about Korean body norms is valid. Perhaps Koreans are more vocal with people who don't meet the ideal and try harder to maintain it themselves. But is their norm really that far off from the ideal in many other countries? I would guess that 1) it isn't 2) they're just being more honest about it. In which case, I'd value the honesty and be glad to find out what people really think of me (unless it was being shouted across a crowded bus by someone I didn't even know or something like that). Perhaps, a post about Korean bluntness and their compulsion for meeting societal norms would be more on target than one that deals with Big "Foreign" Women (I changed the placement of the quotation marks to make a point). But I haven't actually gone to Korea yet, so I'd like to hear someone else's opinion about this.

As a sidenote, I agree with the poster who said that just being smaller does not make you healthier. I see a lot of what people in the 'muscle and fitness' subculture would call "skinny-fat." The percentage of bodyfat on some of these skinny girls is appalling; I can tell when I reach out and grab their spongy arms. I'd rather date someone a bit bigger but firmer, because skinny-fat girls tend to age badly when their butts and upper arms start falling somewhere in their thirties or forties. I just don't feel jealous of them at all.

[JongnoGuru]

[Veronica Rose]

I like your response. It was pretty funny.

And yes, I think I'm pretty aware of what the hot-button topics on this forum are as well. They're rather obvious after a awhile. (I've actually been lurking in these forums for six months now. That fact and the relationships that I have in the expatriate Korean community here are the only things that make me feel qualified to comment on a debate revolving around life in a country I've never been to.)

[Cigar_Guy]

"Not that I'm out of shape, you understand. I'm 190 pounds of rock hard muscle, underneath 40 pounds of sturdy protective fat. It's important to have that layer of fat. You can't have guys hitting you in your muscles all the time. But that extra padding also cushions the blow for your opponent's fists, which allows him to slug you longer and with more abandon. So that layer of fat is both a good and a bad thing, I guess. It works both ways is what I'm saying."

--From The Time Machine Did It by John Swartzwelder ("Writer of 59 episodes of the Simpsons")[/i]

[StAxX SOuL]

[endofthewor1d]

[desultude]

[Zulu]

[kermo]

[Css]

[periwinkle]

[Becka]

I thought about how I might react to being called 'fat' before I came here... I was kinda surprised to find that a) it hasn't really happened all that much, and b) when it does, it hasn't really bothered me.

People will say stuff wherever you go, about whatever they like or dislike. I prefer honest opinion (even if I disagree) to saccharine niceness anyway.

Just a part of a bigger lesson in appreciating differences among people, I suppose.

[Css]

[Hater Depot]

A few good jokes from the Guru aside, can anybody honestly say they feel smarter after reading this thread? Time to take it out back and shoot it, then tell the kids it went to thread heaven.

[joyfulgirl]