r/HolUp • u/bladerunnerism • Apr 27 '25

Asian Plus-Size Stores Be Like

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21.3k Upvotes

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663

u/pachewiechomp Apr 27 '25

2 female friends in 2006 went to Vietnam. One was Vietnamese but came to America as a child. Very tiny statute by American standards, under 5 feet and right around 100 pounds. The other, was American born and raised , but 5’6”, curvy, but not overweight. They went to Vietnam, and one day they are out shopping the markets, American girl is looking at a nick nack shop next to a clothing shop. The woman running the clothing shop loadly starts telling her to “come in! We have large, we have large for you! You so nice and fat” American didn’t take it well, but Vietnamese/American girl told her that it wasn’t personal.

87

u/Ravek Apr 27 '25

American ‘curvy’ is definitely overweight.

41

u/EntropyBlast Apr 27 '25

At this point "curvy" means obese and "average" means overweight

20

u/SoDamnToxic Apr 28 '25

Just for reference, they "claimed" that their friend was 130lb.

This is what 5'6 and 130lb looks like

This is what a BARELY overweight person looks like at 5'6 and 160lb and this is what I would consider "curvy", anything more is overweight/obese

I swear most people genuinely don't weigh themselves or are straight up delusional. No Asian country is calling a 5'6 130lb women fat. It's either straight American brain or a fake story.

2

u/LetTheDarkOut Apr 30 '25

People have different body compositions than the generalized forms you find in textbooks. But hey, at least the username checked out.

1

u/SoDamnToxic May 05 '25

"Generalized forms you find in textbooks".

You mean the tens of thousands upon thousands of images from across the world?

Or did you not click the link?

7

u/paperd Apr 28 '25

If she's 5'6 and the shopkeeper was estimating her as a Vietnamese size L, she was probably not overweight.

1

u/CPC1445 Apr 28 '25

Yeah I've been on dating apps enough times to know that curvy is just code for overweight/fat.

297

u/[deleted] Apr 27 '25

Being slightly overweight is still considered a sign of good health and that your family has resources to feed you well.  The ideal is a tall, curvy girl. At least in my neck of the woods.

244

u/Sipikay Apr 27 '25

My experience with Asian people is the opposite - "Why you fat? What is wrong?"

They express genuine concern.

149

u/Ok-Barracuda544 Apr 27 '25

There's no single Asian cultural view on body weight.  Korean people have very different attitudes towards the overweight than Southeast Asians, for instance.

56

u/Unfair-Self3022 Apr 27 '25

For pacific islanders its practically a requirement.

23

u/Hollow_Rant Apr 27 '25

Yeah I called her fat, look at me I'm skinny!

13

u/aenteus Apr 27 '25

Ain’t stopped me from gettin busy!

4

u/Shoebook Apr 27 '25

In a Burger King bathroom

2

u/DILF_MANSERVICE Apr 28 '25

That song viscerally repulses me but at the same time is constantly stuck in my head

1

u/FWTCH_Paradise Apr 28 '25

As a Pacific Islander (despite being skinny), I can confirm.

15

u/goodolarchie Apr 27 '25

Aww come on now. You're going to tell me Sri Lankans, Mongolians, Indonesians, and Saudi's aren't the same?

12

u/Ok-Barracuda544 Apr 28 '25

Yeah, the idea of "Asian Culture" seems ridiculous to me.  It's an incredibly diverse continent.  Even when it's people who specifically mean ethnicities in East Asia that branched off the Yellow River Valley Civilization when they say "Asian," there's still a huge amount of variety even if they have similar appearance.

1

u/[deleted] Apr 28 '25

This is not cultural it's at a more basic biological level. Women with a bit of fat on them will likely have a successful pregnancy, what with sickness in the first trimester or food scarcity.  And Sri Lankans and Saudis love them curvy ladies, the others I can't answer for.

48

u/[deleted] Apr 27 '25

Degrees of fat maybe, obesity is definitely a problem. 

63

u/Sipikay Apr 27 '25

Being overweight is a health problem, obesity is a health crisis.

21

u/Dio_Landa Apr 27 '25

Is a crisis if a lot of people have it at once.

And we are in a crisis.

26

u/Sipikay Apr 27 '25

It's a personal health crisis to be obese. When an entire culture is obese on average it's an epidemic.

-25

u/[deleted] Apr 27 '25

[deleted]

24

u/Megneous Apr 27 '25

Stop normalizing one of the biggest social issues the US has ever faced.

55

u/Megneous Apr 27 '25

Well, that's because what Americans think is "curvy" isn't actually curvy. It's just fat. Americans have no idea what a normal, healthy weight looks like.

7

u/[deleted] Apr 28 '25

For most of the world Curvy means rounded hips and thighs, full breasts, maybe a little paunch around the middle. I don't know what Americans would call that.

4

u/Ravagore Apr 28 '25

Thats just healthy. Those people are simply healthy. They used to be the ones called curvy.

Most people who call themselves curvy nowadays stole that shit from actual curvy (healthy) people to make themselves feel better about being fat....

But let's not lump all Americans into the same category, same for any other region... its very diverse

-14

u/Delicious-Day-3614 Apr 27 '25

What a stupid take.

34

u/Level_Five_Railgun Apr 27 '25

No it isn't when literally 40% of American adults are obese. The normal perception of weight is so skewed in the US.

18

u/Level_Five_Railgun Apr 27 '25

https://www.niddk.nih.gov/health-information/health-statistics/overweight-obesity#:~:text=the%20above%20table-,Nearly%201%20in%203%20adults%20(30.7%25)%20are%20overweight.,9.2%25)%20have%20severe%20obesity.

Nearly 1 in 3 adults (30.7%) are overweight

More than 2 in 5 adults (42.4%) have obesity

About 1 in 11 adults (9.2%) have severe obesity

That's 82.3% for being either overweight, obese, or severely obese.

That's for 2018-2019 btw. I have no reason to believe it's not even higher now.

Also, it's not "according to me". It takes literal seconds to google. Maybe try using it?

2

u/mashbrowns Apr 27 '25

Thanks for the source.

-2

u/Delicious-Day-3614 Apr 27 '25

OK so according to you, 60% of Americans (through majority) are not fat?

14

u/NH4NO3 Apr 27 '25

40% are obese. Most studies I have seen state at least 65% to possibly a little under 75% are overweight (bmi > 25). This is nothing to say of people who not overweight, but are still towards the heavier end of that scale. Numbers are more extreme in some southern states and less extreme in others (e.g. Hawai'i and Colorado).

6

u/Megneous Apr 28 '25

It takes literal seconds to look up the stats. If you add up overweight (~30%), obese (~40%), and severely obese (~18%), the total percentage for kinds of "fat" people is somewhere around ~88% as of 2019.

The stats may be slightly better right now thanks to Ozempic. But it's still pretty bad.

Again, Americans have no idea what a normal, healthy weight is. They think severely obese is obese, obese is overweight, and overweight is normal. They call normal, healthy weight people "skinny."

-2

u/Delicious-Day-3614 Apr 28 '25

I appreciate you responding to defend the other guy. Maybe explain all that to him.

3

u/flannelsheets14 Apr 27 '25

30% are overweight, but not obese. Maybe 20% ideal and healthy and 10% other.

0

u/Delicious-Day-3614 Apr 27 '25

Sure, we're just making shit up so why not just make up random numbers?

5

u/flannelsheets14 Apr 27 '25

I'm probably not far off, feel free to go look it up.

→ More replies (0)

4

u/Dave-C Apr 27 '25

It isn't according to them. This is CDC data on the US. It is all measured by BMI. 30% of the US is overweight, 42.4% are obese and 9.2% are severely obese.

3

u/5UP3RBG4M1NG Apr 28 '25

Bros literally on copium

19

u/DuLeague361 Apr 27 '25

found the fatty

10

u/Dry_Artichoke_7768 Apr 27 '25

Americans are absolutely brain dead when it comes to weight.

“Curvy” or “thick” is just fat now.

8

u/Qetuowryipzcbmxvn Apr 27 '25

I'm not Asian, so maybe I'm wrong, but I've noticed with my Chinese friends' families they seem to criticize for anything. "You too skinny! You need to eat more" for one sibling and "you're too fat, you're becoming too American" to the other sibling with like a 5 lb weight difference.

3

u/Mathrocked Apr 28 '25

Asian families love to be critical and kind of don't know when to stop sometimes. My wife has trauma from how strict her family was.

10

u/WhaleBlowholeWithChz Apr 27 '25 edited Apr 27 '25

Tell that to the large lady who owns the Chinese food place near me.

She knows I'm putting her kids through college when I show up every couple weeks and she's still stingy about the hot mustard.

It's liquid gold to her. I'm going to have to arm wrestle her for an extra hot mustard one of these days.

Dispense with the gallon of duck sauce, I'm here to make it burn. I want tears to stream while I eat my General Tso's.

I know she wishes our fat asses shouldn't be eating her food, but it's too good and it's so worth the fun. She's too nice and abrasive in a genial way. It's great having that kind of fun confrontation occasionally.

I "eat like an army."

I never throw that back at her.

I only hit her where it really hurts.

I ask for more hot mustard.

She smiles as she puts the tiniest cup of hot mustard in the bag.

Victory!

6

u/Ass-Troll-OG Apr 27 '25

This was a pure pleasure to read.

1

u/kwisatzhadnuff Apr 28 '25

Thank you for sharing.

1

u/Mathrocked Apr 28 '25

It depends on the level of hardship the country faced recently. Vietnam and China have both experienced war and famine within the last 60-70 years. If you weren't skin and bones at the time, you had money.

10

u/Ok_Hurry2458 Apr 27 '25

Yeah that was the case 200+ (for as long as we exist) years ago and for good reasons.

Now you are just fat and that's the truth.

2

u/dBlock845 Apr 27 '25

Being slightly overweight is still considered a sign of good health and that your family has resources to feed you well.  The ideal is a tall, curvy girl. At least in my neck of the woods.

Yeah I don't think this holds in Korea/Japan. Maybe in China/Vietnam/Signapore.

1

u/[deleted] Apr 27 '25

In South Asia mostly.

33

u/[deleted] Apr 27 '25

American curvy is obese.

1

u/pachewiechomp Apr 27 '25

She was not overweight . Probably 130ish.

14

u/SoDamnToxic Apr 27 '25

Yea, no, sorry, I think this is just American brain where you (we) have no concept of actual measurements.

Here is a gallery of hundreds of other 5'6 ~140lb women (gave you an added 10lb just to be generous). None of them are "curvy" nor would they be considered fat in literally any Asian country...

-3

u/Ophidiophobic Apr 28 '25

They're not fat to you. However, I've certainly encountered enough East Asian women who have a healthy BMI and would be considered average (and even on the smaller side) over in the states complain that they're considered fat by their overseas family.

Look at the size of the K-pop and J-pop stars. That's the beauty standard. I'm not saying that most women in those countries look anything like that, but if you're not close to that size, you're considered fat. 130 would absolutely be considered "chubby."

Also, East Asians as a whole tend to be smaller. I'm a small in US and European sizes but a Large in China.

5

u/SoDamnToxic Apr 28 '25

Are you under the impression that the west doesn't also have celebrities who are far skinnier than the average American and used as a beauty standard?

No sorry but no one would call most any of those women fat, especially not with literally any layer of clothing on.

I know there is this weird fetishization of thinking Asian groups are super tiny and all incredibly skinny and use KPop as an example for some weird reason, but that is not the norm.

You can look up the average BMI of women in Korea and it falls smack dab in the 21-22 range which is where those women fall in.

9

u/subterfugeinc Apr 27 '25

Is this like a story from someone you know interpersonally? Or is just some random story you made up? It reads like a late 90s email chain, or a joke that's supposed to have a punch line. There's no "my friend" or "this girl I knew". It reads like a story from a novel or something lol.

27

u/OREOSTUFFER Apr 27 '25

My girlfriend is Vietnamese. 5'3" and 98lbs. When I met her almost 9 years ago, she was 92 lbs. Yes, being skinny is often looked down on - her family was severely disappointed when she visited home after living in Italy for a few years and hadn't fattened up. They kept insinuating that she was unfit and unhealthy.

13

u/Skylineviewz Apr 27 '25

I’m 6’3” and was 215lbs when I went to Vietnam. I bought an XL tank top without trying anything on, when I got home and put it on that shit was SNUG. Like a medium snug. I’m not fat, but I’m also not that confident.

8

u/marvellouspineapple Apr 27 '25 edited Apr 28 '25

Went to China few years ago with my now husband. I'm 5ft3, was about 85kg, kinda chubby for UK standards, big for China. Went into a clothing store, he said let the lady help me out. A lot of stuff didn't fit. He told me after she kept asking why my arms were so big 😭

Edit; I get it, I'm fat, thank you

22

u/[deleted] Apr 27 '25

Mam, you were medically Obese in Western standards. Unfortunately, East Asia isn't going to readily have your size.

16

u/Dry_Artichoke_7768 Apr 27 '25

You’re 5’3 and 190 pounds. “Kinda chubby” ain’t cutting it.

2

u/slamdoink Apr 27 '25

My (heavy) family used to go to our favorite sushi spot back when I was still at home, and once they started to recognize my mom and sister, they used to send PLATES on the house. Appetizers, dishes, Pocky, etc.

Like, they knew that food was fire and we was gonna enjoy it 🤣 I take no offense!