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Over the past year I have apparently been melting away drip by drip. It's been a slow process, a gradual and unintentional whittling that I've been too busy to notice, but somehow I am thin again. Like high school thin, ew. I've suspected this for some time due to:

a) comments from Westerners back home saying that I am "too skinny" and "eat some chicken or something, man."

b) a glaring absence of my students baldly telling me that I am a fat pig-teacher, and Korean co-workers taking subtle jabs at my perceived bulk.

Korean standards of obesity vary greatly from Western levels of acceptibility... chances are that most of you guys would be considered somewhere between 'very fat' to 'enormously fat', with a select few ranked as 'tremendously fat with a morbid chance of being mistaken for a minibus'. Koreans are generally small framed and rail-thin, although Western-style fast food has begun to take its toll and female dieting is on the rise. Nonetheless, one of the most commonly-cited instances on Dave's ESL Cafe of reverse culture shock is that you'll notice how peculiarly fatass everyone in your native culture seems. This is a skinny, skinny country compared to Canada.

It is admittedly harder for Western females to contend with Korean standards of size than men: I can, at least, compare myself to fat businessmen bloated on booze while Jen and Lisa have trouble finding clothes that fit despite them being the smallest girls I know. The biggest shopping districts in Seoul have a Western section, otherwise known as the fatty-fat XXXL section, to cater to our special needs. Purchasing goods at these oversized distribution depots can understandably be a rather discouraging experience.

Most Western girls in Korea complain that they gain weight - they generally agree that additional poundage is here, and seem to note it constantly. Perhaps the gain is unpleasantly amplified when one is forced to stand next to consistently tiny women on the subway all the time, I dunno. The environment is certainly problematic for those perhaps looking to get away from commercially constructed images of impossible beauty in North America. Westerners are basically, through genetics or hormone-infused beef or drive-thrus or something, the hulking land-whales of the Korean food chain. We bob like puffy, contented flab-balloons down streets overflowing with slippery Korean minnows.

And so, by local standards I am still barely passable as a human being. But when I stepped onto a scale that mysteriously appeared in our teacher's lounge this week, I affirmed that I am but a shadow of my former majestic self. In less than a year I have lost more than twenty pounds. Now you might tell me to shut up and stop bragging, you son of a bitch, but let me assure you that this is more of a lament than a boast. It is infinitely radder to be a tall fat guy than a tall gangly guy, and I have actually been targeting Burger Kings and fried chicken in a spirited attempt to juice myself up.

To no avail. I'm not sure whether chasing kids all day instead of sitting in an office chair counts as 'regular exercise', or maybe a lack of weed has forced me to pursue a more active life, but I am wasting away here. Perhaps I am eating vegetables accidentally, or a magical Korean climate has brought rumbling to life the cogs and wheels of my formerly invincible metabolism. Whatever the cause, this is a distressing return to physical frailty and I live in constant fear that one my students will soon be able to beat me up. For some Korea has served as a bodily inflater, pumping up their guts and thighs and tearing down their self-esteem; for me it's been an involuntary Jenny Craig retreat.

[Korea] [weight] [fat foreigners] [culture shock]

Posted by Chris at 09:46 AM >> Commentations (9)