As someone who gets to interview celebrities – thanks to my job – I’ve had the privilege of chatting with some of the most talented and interesting people I’ll ever meet. As someone who also reads, speaks and writes Mandarin – thanks to my dad who insisted upon my Chinese education – I couldn’t help noticing something the other day: Asian starlets like talking about their weight loss.
Now I don’t mean when they are asked a direct question about it because that would be unfair, but in the last few months, I’ve read at least two press releases with paragraphs devoted to how much weight a particular rising starlet has lost. And I recently interviewed a budding singer who cites her biggest career regret as eating so much that she now has to lose weight. Really?
I understand these aspiring youngsters have a certain physical appearance they need to achieve, especially in the Chinese music industry where the average wannabe star weighs about 45kg or less, but honestly, it makes it just a tad difficult for me to take them seriously when, out of all the things they could be talking about in order to establish themselves as artistes, they choose to announce their weight.
Besides, I’m pretty sure many of the other singers and actresses face the same pressures daily and most of them actually have more important things to talk about and would like to avoid the topic, thank you very much.
