This quote from one of the mother’s left me speechless:

“In our society, it’s all about looks,” said Ms. Seo, 35. “I’m afraid my daughter is shorter than her peers. I don’t want her to be ridiculed and lose self-confidence because of her height.”

Rather than trying to instill a sense of self-worth in her daughter, she’s putting even more emphasis on the physical, basically telling her daughter that she is, and will remain “less than” if she doesn’t grow enough.

The end of the article also…made me frustrated:

If so, one country that has been left behind is North Korea. Food shortages there have left children stunted, according to the United Nations and private relief agencies. Dr. Park cited the case of a 16-year-old who fled North Korea last July to join his mother, who had arrived in the South three years earlier. The boy was 5 feet tall, almost four inches below the South Korean average.

“His height wasn’t unusual for the North,” Dr. Park said. “But when his mother saw him again, she cried because the boy hadn’t grown at all, and because she knew the disadvantages he’d face here.”

“My dream is to open growth clinics in North Korea,” Dr. Park said, “so that, once we unify, children from both sides will be able to stand shoulder to shoulder, not with one side a head taller than the other.”

But rather than worrying about growth clinics in the North, shouldn’t we be worrying about food supplies and access to nutrition and health care? While Dr. Park’s intentions may be honorable, his approach strikes me as severely misguided, and even detrimental.

I have to say, while it wasn’t exactly a shock to see this statistic — women in Seoul are slim — it was heartbreaking to face these numbers. There had been plenty of clues that this was the case, including the fact that Uniqlo, one of the most popular clothing stores among the younger set here, doesn’t carry pants (that I’ve seen) above size 29. Not a good message to send. And I remember meeting with a precious, and quite thin, student over the summer. I asked who the celebrity on her computer was:

Student: Oh, I don’t know, but she has a really skinny body.

Me: So….?

Student: Well, my boyfriend told me he’d love me more if I lost 8 kilos. (That’s over 17 pounds!)

Me: You should lose your boyfriend.
I know that’s an oversimplification of how to handle such a situation, but I was glad when she came back the next week and said they’d broken up. The poor girl couldn’t have weighed more than 50 kilos to begin with; losing 8 would have been horrifying.