Watching Welcome to the Quiet Room, and listening to Yu Aoi’s Miki character telling Asuka she doesn’t eat because whatever she eats means that someone else more worthy doesn’t get to eat it, totally left me cold. I wondered what was the situation of eating disorders in Asia, since it’s ‘common knowledge’ that Asians are genetically skinny.
*sighs* I ended up reading quite a few articles dealing with the issue as far back as 1999 until this year. Throughout all of them, there is an emphasis on cases on bi-racial young women, or women living in a bi-cultural environment. Taking the example of Chinese-American or British-Chinese women who weren’t as self-conscious about their weight living on this side of the world, but would get ‘picked on’ back in Asia because they tend to be ‘bigger’.
But I wasn’t too interested in those particular cases, I was trying to find how common are these eating disorder cases in other cultures, particularly Asia. I always thought Asians were thin naturally… always thought they’re skinny and love food. That’s what I’ve always seen in my family. It’s also noted on many of the articles that this value for food comes from the terrible years of starvation they went through in countries like China, India, Cambodia… even Peru where there still exists malnourishment. It is a crime to not eat, when there’s people who have nothing to eat. Yes, that’s why Quiet Room totally freaked me out… it was the first time I had heard that reason~~~ So there are eating disorders much more complicated than the “I want to be thin” one, for bi-cultural people is the “I want to be white”, for others it’s the sense of taking control over their lives…
