I was born in Sydney, Australia and stayed there until I was nine years old. After that, I moved to California, which, until recently, was my home. My mom is a Chinese woman from Singapore and my dad is a Chinese man from Burma, so I am an Oriental raised with Western ideals.

Living so close to Hollywood, I definitely felt the effects of trying to achieve the perfect body. From a very young age, magazines, television and movies taught me that thinness is beautiful; anything else was disgusting.

As a child and teenager, he was quite lanky, maintaining a slim profile while consuming copious amounts of pizza, chips, and candy. I never weighed myself, never dieted and never thought about my weight. At 17, he was 5’6″ and weighed 120 pounds. People were always saying things like “You’re so skinny!” It must be because you’re Asian.” My biggest body problem back then was my dissatisfaction with my small breasts.

After high school, when I was in my 20s, I gained about 15 pounds. I was still eating the same as before, so I knew it wasn’t the dreaded “freshman 15” that people were said to earn in college. My metabolism just started to suck. My friend was on the Atkins diet, so I jumped on the bandwagon myself. It worked very well. I lost weight and was down to my high school size.

When I was 21, I tried acting. At every audition, I noticed the slender girls there, they seemed much smaller than me, even the non-Asian ones seemed slimmer. I had packed on the pounds after Atkins, so being in the “business” made me diet again. I tried not to eat too much and went for a run. This also worked, I got my “slim” figure back but I was starving. I was always hungry and my head ached all the time.

I ended up quitting for spiritual reasons, not because it was hard but because I felt like I was drifting away from God. So after my restrictive diet, I went crazy. I got drunk on all the fat and sugar stuff. I went up to about 155 pounds, the heaviest I’ve ever been. I stopped hearing that I was skinny, I was getting less and less looks from handsome strangers. He wasn’t fat, but he was definitely heavier. One of my closest friends at the time told me that I wasn’t as “attractive as I used to be.” Needless to say, we stopped being so close, but his words made me think a lot about my weight. My dad commented on how fat he had gained weight and that was what hurt me the most. Once he was at a friend’s house, he went out for a few minutes to talk to his girlfriend. He left me alone with his brothers and friends, whom he had known for years but was not very close to. They began to make fun of my appearance and asked me if I was “stocking up for the winter”. This was the lowest I had ever felt in my life. I felt ugly.

I ended up losing 10 pounds so now I’m 145. Sometimes I can go down to 141 and sometimes I go up to 148 but I stay in this range, it’s been like that for about five years now. I no longer get comments about my weight and I feel like I’m pretty average size for an American.

The only Asian countries I have visited have been Singapore and Malaysia, which is where I am temporarily living at the moment. The first time I visited these places as an adult, I definitely stuck out like a sore thumb. I was taller and thicker than most of the girls there. When I tried on clothes, they were large or extra large. I have big thighs and a big butt. While this J.Lo body may be desirable in the US, it’s not here. Chinese girls are expected to be petite and slim. Well, you can say, “Jackie, how do you know this isn’t all just in your head?” I know because pretty much all of my relatives here (that’s like 12 aunts and uncles and 14 cousins) have told me I’m “too big.” Too big for Asia, land of the “skinny Asian girl”. I have seen some bigger girls here, but they are few and far between.

Last night, I was advised to lose weight to “fit in” and be more successful in my television production job here. This was a huge insult to me, before I got here my weight had dropped to 141 and stayed there, which I was very happy with. Also, what does my weight have to do with job performance? They told me that if I was thinner, I would look more like them, they would accept me and respect me more. I kindly listened to the advice they gave me, but said that I was happy with my body. If I lost weight, great, if not, I wouldn’t cry myself to sleep.

It may seem like I’m confident with my body, but there are many times when I look in the mirror and feel repulsed.

One of my friends in Australia, with whom I have managed to keep in touch for over 16 years, brought my poor body image to my attention when I visited there last year. He had said a phrase that many of my colleagues say in the United States; “I’m so fat!” This was said casually while trying on clothes or eating a handful of greasy potato chips. I didn’t even realize how often I use this phrase. It was just something I said, it didn’t mean I thought I was fat, maybe subconsciously I thought if I said it to myself, I wouldn’t have to hear it from others. My friend told me that Australian magazines try to reconstruct the body image of women. They feature women of all shapes and sizes on their covers. Even my friend, who is a happily plump Australasian, was photographed in her underwear in the pages of the Australian Cosmo. I am proud that she is proud of her appearance.

I really wanted to write about this topic, not only as an Asian woman, but as a woman in general. We are constantly bombarded with images that tell us that we have to look one way or another. We all buy it. As a larger Asian woman, I feel that other larger Asian women (ie those who are not a negative size 14) feel a lot more pressure to be thin than the average woman. Every race has its stereotypes. White men can’t dance. White men can’t jump. Blacks are thugs. All blacks are basketball players. Asians can’t drive. All Asians are skinny. Well, I disagree and I’m sure many of you do too. Justin Timberlake is a white man with extraordinary dancing skills. Larry Bird was a white man who could jump. Barack Obama (US presidential candidate in 2008) is a black man who is far from a bully. And I, Jackqueline Lou, am NOT a skinny Asian.

And I’m fine with that.