Fantasized and Infantilized

THE ASIAN WOMAN’S FIGHT FOR STRENGTH AND AUTONOMY

BY LULU YAO GIOIELLO

“You’d look amazing with 7% body fat,” a male acquaintance wrote me late one night on the Japanese messaging app LINE. At work, people often got us confused: We were both East Asian and Italian, with olive skin, long dark hair, and similar height and dress. It had been some time since I’d last seen or heard from my doppelgänger, but a quick glance on social media showed me he had undergone a significant weightlifting transformation. His once waif-like frame was now statuesque, his elongated body metamorphosed into an imposing set of shoulder muscles stacked atop a tapered waist. I was surprised at how dramatically he had been able to change his physical appearance. My immediate thought was that he was trying to appear more masculine.

“You should really consider lifting weights,” he followed up.

It was unsettling that he imagined his new physique would fit me. Seven percent body fat—was he asking me to 'starve?' At 20 years old, I was repelled by the idea of going to the gym. While he leaned feminine for a guy, I was often described as the opposite; I had inherited dark and abundant body hair, strong calves, and large feet, which I self-consciously tried to minimize after a series of unsolicited comments post-puberty. More recently, a coworker at a retail shop had likened me to a “beautiful boy,” a stranger in the subway assumed I was trans, and I was asked if I was a “boy or a girl” on the streets of Shinjuku.

Growing up, I fought my androgyny with a fierce dedication to femininity. I followed Cosmopolitan advice, aspired to be and dress like a ViVi model, and obsessed over my measurements. Once out of college, I was introduced to spaces and people who embraced what I was trying to hide. I cut my hair and wore baggy clothes. I no longer felt the need to tone down the side of me that was stubborn, messy, ambitious, and competitive. In these alternative spaces, I started to feel pride in the challenge I posed to the gender binary. But even though I wanted to 'feel' strong and empowered, I didn’t want to 'look like I was trying'. I refused to put an effort into my physical fitness. I didn’t want to tip the scale; I had no desire to bulk up.

I thought of those LINE messages and my aversion to muscle as I binge-watched "Physical 100," a Korean reality show that pits athletes against each other for the title of perfect physique. The contestants come from different disciplines—some are Olympic athletes, others are bodybuilders, CrossFit enthusiasts, car dealers, mountain rescuers, or cosplayers. They complete incredible feats, like pulling a 1.5-ton ship by hand, repeatedly pushing a 100kg boulder over a hill, and performing “infinite squats” while lifting barrels of coal. Even though the bodies of these contenders are hard, imposing, and 'really fucking ripped,' the show is surprisingly wholesome and open-minded. The contestants consistently cheer for each other and show respect to the losing side. The show also features women; ones who are nothing like I’ve ever seen in media depictions of Asian femmes. What they lack in height they make up for in enormous presence. Their silhouettes are pumped with muscle. They face each challenge dead set on carrying their weight (and then some). Still, the show cannot avoid societal pressures. When selecting teams, the female contestants are often considered disadvantageous—thought of as easy targets in one-on-ones and given less screen time compared to the heavy-hitting men that dominate the rest of the series.

When the first season of "Physical 100" came out last year, it sent me down a rabbit hole to discover more examples of female muscularity. I started following Korean bodybuilders and Olympic hopefuls like Zheng Qinwen and Ramla Ali on Instagram. I watched a blurry YouTube upload of "Pumping Iron II," an ’80s documentary on female bodybuilders, and subsequently its prequel, the 1977 film Pumping Iron that lay claim to Arnold Schwarzenegger’s rise to fame. In "Pumping Iron II," Bev Francis, an Australian powerlifter and national shot put champion is recruited to compete in the 1983 World Bodybuilding Championship in Las Vegas. Her muscularity hasn’t been seen before in the sport. The bulk of her competitors, while more muscular than the average women, fantasize about looking like Wonder Woman and share a fear of working their muscle beyond the “feminine balance” that is part of the contest’s criteria for women. They focus just as much energy on their bikinis, hair, and makeup as they do their workouts. Gloria Steinem’s review of the film, titled "The Strongest Woman in the World," echoes the contestants’ and my own formerly limited view on women’s strength: “Yes, they were bodybuilders, but, they kept reassuring us, they hadn’t gone too far.” Steinem goes on to observe the restrictive view of the competition’s judges: “The judges became obsessed with the crisis of standards that Bev Francis’s appearance presented. The sole woman judge, also a writer about women’s bodybuilding, was challenged by a reporter on the impact of Bev Francis’s potential victory. ‘I think it would be a total disaster,’ she said bitterly, ‘and I think the sport would totally go in reverse… She doesn’t look like a woman. She doesn’t represent what women want to look like.’” Much to the competition’s audience and the viewers’ dismay, this sentiment is ultimately confirmed by the voting results, when the judges place Bev Francis last in the competition. We are seeing a similar fight today at the Olympics in Paris, where netizens on social media are battling transphobic and misogynist voices calling for the disqualification of the great, non-white female athletes Imane Khelif and Lin Yu-ting, simply because they seem “too masculine” to compete, their very gender identity being put into question despite their constant objection to accusations.

In "Physical 100," "Pumping Iron II," and international sports competitions like the Olympics, strong women are seen fighting against not just their opponents but also the oppositional forces of the male showrunners and their traditionalist allies, which shape the spectacle itself. According to Tessa Char in her article “Netflix’s Physical 100 Was Skewed Against Women,” the show is “a metaphor for what it means to be a woman in a world designed for men.” In the real world, women compete for equal opportunity while contending with a glass ceiling, especially in traditionally male-dominated spaces. While men are typically expected to be strong, capable, and big, women are pressured to be small, unassuming, and passive. In Shari L. Dworkin’s essay “Holding Back: Negotiating a Glass Ceiling on Women’s Muscular Strength,” the glass ceiling theory applies to the weight room. She argues that women in fitness “may find their bodily agency limited not by biology but by ideologies of emphasized femininity that structure the upper limit on women’s ‘success.’” The biggest triumph is that the strong women of today in sport, "Physical 100," and the unconventional builders in "Pumping Iron II" 40 years prior stay iron-willed in their “unfeminine” pursuit of strength even if it means placing last—or worse, disqualification. At once considered too strong and too weak, too feminine and too masculine, too real and too unnatural, the strong woman carries a heavy burden; her very existence is a challenge to the idea of what it means to be a woman.

When it comes to Asian femininity and aesthetics, we have historically been fantasized and infantilized by local and imported patriarchal structures; socially indoctrinated to be slight, subservient, ornamented, and passive in comparison to men, especially in the upper classes. In the Spring and Autumn period, or "Chunqiu" (770-481 BC), women in Emperor Chu’s harem starved themselves to death to capture his attention. From the beginning of global trade, Asian women have been compared to exotic goods (skin like porcelain, hair like silk) or personified as food (goose egg face 鹅蛋脸, and more recently, green tea bitch 绿茶婊 and soybean paste girl 된장녀). Katayoon Barzegar, Pegah Pasalar, and Niloufar Nematollahi’s piece “Who are the Women of Allah: Western Art Institutes and the Representation of Iranian Woman” notes that “in school books, on national television, and banners in public spaces, the Islamic Republic of Iran depicts the chador as a shell protecting a pearl—women’s dignity—from men’s penetrative gazes.” A China doll, a pearl, an egg, or a lotus flower: These objects evoke something easily crushed or consumed, or otherwise to be sheltered and protected but never allowed selfhood.

The male gaze is so deeply embedded in the way we see ourselves, that it also appears in woman-to-woman comparisons. We self-objectify by obsessing over our looks, covering our imperfections, and defaulting to an insatiable perfectionism. We force ourselves into unnatural standards as if it comes naturally, like having an A4 waist, a V-shaped jaw, and zero fat, muscle, pores, or wrinkles. From invasive surgeries, filters, foundation, and constricting clothes to diets, medications, and exercise regimens that will make us “tight” but not too “big”; “fit,” but not 'that' strong. Much like the simultaneous “too fat” and “too skinny” criticisms I anticipate with dread when visiting my Taiwanese family, we must walk a tightrope of feminine aesthetics. We must look like we’re trying… but not too hard. While these experiences are not only restricted to Asian women, it is none the more obvious with Asian media reaching global audiences through the digital and cultural zeitgeist.

The paradox of the strong Asian woman baffles modern society as she does not fit into the shapes and sizes usually centered and celebrated. Anne Anlin Cheng states in her book "Ornamentalism," “encrusted by representations, abstracted and reified, the yellow woman is persistently sexualized yet barred from sexuality, simultaneously made and unmade by the aesthetic project. Like the proverbial Ming vase, she is at once ethereal and base, an object of value and a hackneyed trope.” Far less visible than the beauty influencers online and in the media, female athletes and physical coaches such as Doyeon Kim, the subject of our photo story, refuse to be withheld by representations—they choose instead to represent themselves, polishing their bodies in ways that make them stronger, both physically and mentally.

“The stronger I get, the better off I am as a woman. In CrossFit, we inspire each other. I help others move past their mental limitations and misconceptions of female CrossFitters to push themselves further than they think they can. In the last few years, I’ve seen a change in the perception of female fitness in Korea. I’ve seen women young and old lifting heavier weights. Some have healed from physical injury or other health issues, some have grown into stronger and more positive grandparents, parents, spouses, and daughters for their family. And some just say they’ve found more energy when working, traveling, and going out to play.”

Doyeon’s dedication to mental and physical training is inspirational—she prioritizes well-being as a way to gain control over her body and its presence in the world. Her and other athletes’ resolve creates motivation for myself and countless other women, whether we are headed to our next fitness class or into the office. I have been in awe of the breakout stars at this year’s Olympics—witnessing Asian women accumulate both official and viral praise. As Qinwen Zheng wins gold, Kim Yeji balances focus and motherhood, and Torri Huske breaks records, I think of the little girls seeing reflections of themselves on screen. Each time I head out the door, I care a little bit less about looking good or being “unladylike,” and more about pushing myself harder than the week before. I look around the room less in envy and more in appreciation of willpower. What’s on display in the gym, these images, broadcasted sporting competitions, and in Doyeon’s daily actions is the beauty of physical robustness, not the false appearance of a perfect body.