I saw some experts in different fields discuss my project, namely a teacher of clinical medicine (in the direction of eating disorders), a Ph.D. in sociology, a young artist, and a plus-size blogger.

Reazon
A teacher of clinical medicine (in the direction of eating disorders)

Flora(yuxin)：Women’s awareness and body image anxiety is a global issue, but I would like to discuss it in the context of our national social and cultural environment. What is the cause of this aesthetic narrowness? Do you personally feel that your social background and education have influenced your perception of body image or appearance? What is it like? How do you think about it? Finally, regarding eating disorders, which are essentially mental illnesses, I would like to know if you have any information about the impact of our social environment and culture on these mental illnesses? Or do you have any data to share with me about what other disorders occur in the cases you have encountered?

Reason： The “Chinese aesthetic” is the result of the intrusion of Western civilization. Epidemiological surveys have shown that the prevalence of eating disorders is higher in developed countries and more prevalent in urban areas than in rural areas. This geographical difference reflects the difference in the level of economic development and the degree of penetration of the Western culture of “thinness as beauty.” Also, the predominance of women with eating disorders may be related to the cultural norm of “thinness as beauty,” primarily aimed at women. In traditional Chinese culture, women are “the head of the household,” and the standard for female body shape is “plump,” so there are few cases of eating disorders. With the development of social and economic development and the infiltration of western culture, the role of women in society has changed dramatically. The social expectation of women has changed to “being successful in career and family, but at the same time being slim.”
I heard voices around me from a young age saying that it would be nice if you had thinner legs, especially my mother, who would often judge my figure. As a child, I thought it was shameful not to have boobs or thick legs. An incident at the gym not long ago also stuck out. The trainer said you’ve lost weight recently if only you could lose another ten pounds. I said I couldn’t lose any more weight. He said, “Why? You used to be so thin. I said I couldn’t go back. He said he had to be tougher on himself. I said I wanted to be kinder to myself. He then felt very shaken and didn’t say anything more. I still felt very uncomfortable afterward, extreme male gaze scenario… Now I have a complete sense of self; I know what I want, and like, so I can dislike him and disagree with him. But many girls who are forced into this male gaze develop negative emotions, and some even start unhealthy weight-loss behaviors. Ultimately, the girls suffer, and in complex cases, even create a disorder like an eating disorder.
Eating disorders are mental illnesses, but they are psychosomatic/psychological and are not the same as what we generally think of as severe mental illnesses like schizophrenia.

Xin

Artist

“Feel my tummy.”

“Obesity is not the source of all evil.” She said.

Xin has designed a series of works about ‘fat meat.’ In addition to exhibiting her tummy sofa and short films at the Central Academy of Fine Arts, she has also planned a photographic anthology, which is still in production. She named the book “My Story with Meat.”

She contacted 122 fat people through social media and friends, but only six were willing to be interviewed and photographed by her. They appeared half-naked on camera, showing off their meat, just like her. Photographs and text were paired together in a unit for each of them, and she asked the fat men and women to do whatever they could to “gain confidence in their bodies” and then filmed them.

One-shot was a must-be one of the people facing the mirror.

“A lot of them were very resistant to looking in the mirror.” She says.

One girl told Xu Ruoxin that she never looked in a full-length mirror because she found it “hard to accept that this is not how I imagined myself to be.”

Almost all of her interviewees had an ideal version of themselves. One girl aspiring to a flat chest and long limbs, and another girl prefers a fuller, firmer bodybuilding style. Xin found that they shared a common trait: they suspected it was because they were fat when things went wrong.

“All people get sick, so why must we accuse the person of being sick because they are fat? It’s unhealthy to smoke, it’s unhealthy to stay up late, it’s unhealthy to play on your phone, all of it is unhealthy, so why must you use unhealthiness as a target, or a dagger, to stab the fat person? What has he done wrong? Is being fat the original sin? I don’t think so.”

Content：

Flora:

I’m pretty curious about the project you’re doing, especially about the research you’ve done. I want to ask you about your thoughts on some of the content because I’m personally studying our country’s social and cultural environment to explore this matter. on women? What do you think is the cause of this aesthetic narrow-mindedness?
Because some people think that body image anxiety is a global issue. Still, some people say it’s a result of the introduction of Western civilization. Still, in traditional societies, the idea of the three-inch golden lotus also exists. Still, nowadays, it’s very casual in foreign countries to wear suspenders or not wear a bra. Still, if I wear very shorts one day in China, my parents will ask me to wear more than one. For example, I dress very self-consciously in Shanghai, and I don’t get that much attention around me, but this voice comes up from time to time in northern cities. It seems that this is cultural; could this be part of the reason for body anxiety or eating disorders, and is this part of this related to the traditional cultural influence ingrained in our blood? What do you think about that?

Raw： “First of all, regarding Chinese aesthetics, I think it isn’t easy to define what Chinese aesthetics is and what kind of influence it has had on Chinese girls because it is a very comprehensive and complex concept of aesthetics. Throughout history, apart from the physical adjectives and descriptors we use today, such as “white, thin and young,” there may also be things such as the quality of virtue and virtuousness that we demand from a girl, something that is still engraved in the hearts of Chinese people despite the changing times. For example, we would like to say that in Chinese aesthetics, a woman must be feminine, we would like to use abstract words to describe her, like water, or we would like to use words like flowers and plants, such as celandine orchid, to describe women. Under the whole oriental warning, women have a very inclusive, soft, soft, soft description.

I feel that I live in a society today where women are the object of the gaze; there is no doubt. When we talk about what Chinese women are, I think it would be more appropriate for men to talk about this: what Chinese women should look like in their eyes, or their descriptions, what Chinese women are like now.

Then I think that in this day and age, the aesthetics of women have become very tolerant, that is, our masses have allowed some women to become that way, those kinds of women who are in the arts, or the fashion industry, or fashion magazines, or on the internet, that is, things that are distant from them, they will, they don’t agree with them, but they can maintain basic respect, as long as it’s a female image like that.

And then I think distance is an essential thing. The proper distance will allow such a female image to exist. By a female appearance, I mean one that completely subverts the traditional female idea, deviant, rebellious, anti-bone, pioneering.

For example, if I wear a camisole, I would be very comfortable in Guangzhou and Shanghai, so that I might wear a camisole in Beijing in the same weather, in the same season, with only a difference of one or two days. Other people might find it very strange because, in their eyes, the climate here is entire. There’s no need to dress like that, and they’re not used to people dressing like that in their visual system, and they have this kind of rejection.

If you’re not in culture, or creative, fashion, art, or anything like that, then if you’re wearing strange clothes, people might think you’re weird, they might think you have a psychological problem. Still, if you’re put into a specific profession or industry, it seems to make sense for you to be like that.
In my opinion, in traditional Chinese culture, the different parts of a woman’s body symbolize many different meanings, for example, our hands, our arms, our breasts, our feet, our legs, they all symbolize many other purposes throughout traditional Chinese culture.
For example
For example, the feet, in traditional society, a girl’s feet were not allowed to be shown to outsiders because they were considered a very private part of a woman, then later with sandals, they were very willing to offer their feet, just like the arms, like the hands. In Japanese culture, Japanese women would then consider the neck to be a very sexy part.

This particular meaning, I think, for women, it is for men, that is, all the information about the female body, the gravitational force must be relative to the opposite sex, close to the group that he wants to attract, and ask some men, ask them what the traditional Chinese aesthetic is. In their role as the “pleasured” party, they define, in a sense, what Chinese women are and what Chinese women’s aesthetics are.

The second thing is eating, about guilt, which has to do with our bodies. Usually, we associate obesity with things like eating, drinking, exercising, sleeping, all these things in our physiology that we bring together when we think about obesity itself.

I don’t think obesity is a bad experience for me because I can buy clothes and wear them from my position. I feel that I am at a level in society where I receive the appropriate respect, so what makes me unhappy? Apart from the fact that obesity is a regulated thing in society as a whole, we want to buy clothes more efficiently. But it’s that we often desire not to have desires, we repress our urges, our appetites, our sexual desires, our desire to consume things, and we often find it difficult to stop them and think that hiding them is a special thing to do. When we talk about the spirit and the flesh, we cannot deny that I think it is an equal state of affairs. Although we may believe that satisfying our appetites, satisfying our material desires, satisfying our sexual desires is something that we do by instinct, or is a nasty thing, or is a barbaric and primitive thing, we cannot deny that our body, as a material entity, can only carry all our so-called spiritual activities if it functions as it should. All our so-called spiritual activities. I think that’s why it’s essential to respect our bodies, respect our emotions, and not be too hard on ourselves when we realize we’re out of control, not to beat ourselves up too much.

I’ve thrown up before because I ate an extra bite of chicken in my dieting cycle, and then my whole guilt came rushing back, and I felt like all my efforts had been wasted, and I ran to the toilet to throw up and pick my throat with my hands. When I think this, there are two of me in my body fighting, the one that follows my desires and instincts and the other that has higher spiritual aspirations, and the two are arguing with each other.

So it is essential to find a balance between these two, that is, where is your measure, where is your limit, I can’t do complete indulgence, and the liberation of nature to release those desires that you have suppressed ordinarily, only we need to find the right size, that is, what is the right degree, actually, beyond that degree there is a little bit too much. So I think everyone is finding a balance and going through a phase like this, including me.

On top of following the choices that I have made in terms of this balance, in the future, I think everyone has to find a balance, whether you, you approve of your body, or you feel that your current state of health is so bad that it doesn’t fit a hypothesis of your ideal body at all. It’s essential to find that perfect body and then make a plan to implement it step by step, or whether you think that your current It’s critical to find that ideal body and then make a plan to implement it step by step, or if you believe you are pleased with your body now, what to do to keep your diet and life in such a state or to get to a better shape but to maintain the body as it is.

We will draw analogies between each other’s destructive emotions or happy emotions and our own emotions. Still, absolutely no one can say to empathize with each other’s feelings and experiences, just because our body is our body and everything that our body has experienced, everything that it has participated in the past, physically or mentally, has created for you, has shaped your position.

Keely

Big size blogger

She said she didn’t understand why things bothered me (such as large breasts), such as not being able to buy lingerie, shortness of breath, and physical fatigue, that others saw as a way to show off. In contrast, she would receive vicious abuse for wearing nice clothes and dressing, saying she was fat and not good-looking enough.

But she just wants to do what she loves, including being a blogger. It’s her hobby, and it’s what keeps her going.

Through my chat, I asked some guys which body type they prefer as a ‘desired’ object. In fact, many men nowadays don’t just like white and thin women, but also appreciate more powerful women. But because body parts have been given different meanings in traditional culture, there is some influence in people’s perceptions. But with the change of information, people of Generation Z are also open to new things.