Originally published on Plus Model Magazine by Les Delano

As an Asian American, you rarely hear about girls who are “plus sized”… I really think it’s almost a matter of denial in our culture. Asian women are supposed to fit in the “cute china doll” stereotype and if you do not meet those standards you are ignored altogether. Growing up I never had an Asian American plus size role model to look to be an example of how to deal with size issues. So I’m here to say that we do exist and there are more of us than you might think.

Growing up Chinese-Japanese-Italian, I really didn’t have an issue with my body size until I hit Junior High. That is when I noticed that I was much taller than all the girls (not to mention boys) in my class. For P.E. one Friday afternoon our teacher took us to the pool and all the girls were talking about how much they weighed and my girlfriends were saying, “Oh my God, I’m so fat I weigh 90 lbs…” I knew full and well that at the time I weighed 136 lbs., and I thought to myself “well, if she is fat, then what the hell am I?” When they turned to me and asked how much I weighed, I realized I had to weigh more than 90 lbs because I was clearly taller than all of the girls so I came up with an arbitrary 115 lbs. This incident sticks out in my mind as a pivotal moment in my life as a plus size girl because this was really the first time that I was made to “feel bad” about my size. 

 My inner struggle was more to do with my cultural acceptance. When I was in 8th grade I was 5’7” and size14. First of all, it is quite a freak of nature to see an Asian woman who is over 5’4” let alone size a size 10+. I remember going to Japan with my parents and literally having people just stop and stare at me… making me feel very self-conscious about my size. I can also remember going to a department store in Japan to look for some pajamas and the sales person telling my mom “we don’t carry ANYTHING CLOSE to her size”. I was so humiliated. 

At this point, my life took a turn for the worse. I would definitely say the pressures of the public conception of beauty got to me. I began to obsess over body image. I spent hours looking at magazines, MTV, soap operas, TV shows, etc. for examples of what I wanted to look like. My ideal was thin, light hair, anything but brown eyes; I went through the colored contacts phase. I started my horrific cycle of trying every diet on the market. I went from sucking down every diet shake known to man, to eating literally 10 soybeans for breakfast, lunch and dinner. I would still eat with my parents at normal meal times because I was so ashamed I needed to diet at all, and of course I didn’t lose any weight because of that.

It really didn’t help that my Grandfather took me aside and said, “Maggie, I’m not happy with your size, you are way too fat and you can’t have any more ice cream.” And he then proceeded to scoop out a big bowl of vanilla ice cream and ate it in front of me. Then there were the other family members who would verbally assess what was on my plate. When I would reach for another serving I would hear “Oh I wouldn’t do that if I were you”. The more I had limits put on me by either family members or myself, the more I would eat.

A lot of the pressure stemmed from my mom’s own issue with her weight, because she used to be small. She continuously gained weight though; I can remember times when she was talking to her friends and saying, “oh, I’m going to drop 30 pounds.” Subconsciously, it had an impact on me—” something’s wrong with the way mom looks, she’s not happy.” When she got up to a size 16 she was mortified. She would say. “Oh my God, a size 16, nobody should be a size 16”. Pretty much all my life after college I was a size 16. And in the back of my head, mom said nobody should be a size 16.

Then there was the shopping agony. When taking me shopping for clothes, my mom would literally not want to buy me anything unless I fit into a certain size. She would be mortified if she saw me walking over to the 14-16 rack of clothes. She would hiss at me, “why are you looking over there?”  She would pick cute clothing from an 8-10 rack.  She would literally buy me stuff that was much too small, saying, “Oh, you’ll fit in this soon.” The clothes just hung in my closet. 

By the time I was a freshman in high school I was 5’8” and a size 18. Everything I owned had elastic in the waistband or was some sort of spandex material. I always wore pantyhose to prevent chafing between my legs and NEVER wore jeans because they made me feel like I was stuffed into a wet suit. I enrolled in a boarding school in Northern California, which happened to double as a Health Institute. I chose to attend this school purely because I wanted to be independent and thought it would be fun. 

The first year I was there I dropped about 30 lbs and grew about 2 inches. I felt better about myself but I was still dealing with the issue that I was the largest one at the school! I couldn’t seem to get myself any smaller than a size 14. I would compare myself to the 2 other Asian girls at the school who were 5’3” and all of a size 2/4. It really didn’t help that the Asian boys were 5’6” and about a 26 inch waist. I just never seemed to fit in. I remember going to the Gap during one of our town trips and fitting into a size 12. I was so excited and came out of the dressing room to tell my friend. She responded with “I got in these size 8 jeans!” So even my moment of personal glory was overshadowed by my friend’s smaller size.

When I got down to a size 12, I started dealing with the pressures of interest from the opposite sex. I remember not knowing how to deal with guys who were interested in me. It overwhelmed me because it was such a novelty and therefore I turned to food once again for comfort. After I put on some weight, the boys’ interest seemed to fade. I almost felt relieved not to have to deal with that pressure.

In college I finally seemed to bloom. I realized that what I had was actually special and not freakish, as I once thought. When I would meet other Asian Americans the first thing that would come out of their mouth was “Woah! What are you?” I was so tempted to respond ” homo sapien, female, what are YOU?” Although I learned to love my height in college, I still had issues with my body size and curves. 

That all changed when I met Heather. I remember when she walked in I felt like the sun was following her. She was a fully size 18 and confidently curvy. I couldn’t take my eyes off of her and knew that I absolutely had to talk to her after class. I introduced myself to her and we pretty much have been best friends since. She played an invaluable role in my life, helping me gain acceptance of my body size. Before Heather, I had no idea there were clothing stores that catered to the plus size woman. I remember shopping for the first time in Lane Bryant with her and feeling so relieved because I now knew that there was life after Macy’s size 14.  

I now know that my body was designed to be plus size. The smallest I have ever gotten down to was a 10 and that was literally for all of 30 min when I had food poisoning and the flu at the same time! There will always be something that I will want to improve upon as far as my body is concerned, but size will not be one of them. Exercise has become one of my daily routines and really “drug of choice”. After all the diets I’ve put myself through, I know nothing works like a little aerobic exercise to keep you healthy.

 I feel that life is way too short to be caught up in keeping up with the stereotypes of the Asian OR American Joneses. Rather I’m choosing to focus on my individuality and say to myself, “how can I change these crazy mindsets?” I want to be a role model for those bigger Asian women who feel like a fish out of water in a culture that celebrates petite stature across the board.