Comedian goes her own weigh
In super-skinny Japan, Naomi Watanabe challenges perceptions about a woman’s looks
TOKYO — Naomi Watanabe is huge in Japan. She’s got almost six million followers on Instagram, she’s a regular on television shows and magazine covers, she has her own fashion line, and a Japanese railway company even created a “Naomi train” last year.
She’s also literally huge. At 220 pounds (100 kilograms), the 29-year-old comedian is double the average weight of Japanese women her age.
“My ideal body is that of a sumo wrestler — big but muscular,” Watanabe laughed during an interview at a production company studio in Tokyo, where she’d been doing a photo-shoot for an upcoming Thomas the Tank Engine movie in which she does a voice-over.
In this country of overwhelmingly thin women, Watanabe is challenging ingrained perceptions about body image, showing that it’s possible to be confident and happy even if you don’t look like a chopstick.
“Japan is not like the U.S. You don’t see many plus-sized women around here,” she said. “But rather than trying to change other people’s minds, I would like to help change the minds of bigger women, to help them feel good about themselves.”
Bigger women are definitely in the minority in Japan. Only three per cent of Japanese women are classified as obese, according to the World Health Organization, compared with 34.9 per cent in the United States.
Watanabe offers another way. She’s not promoting weight gain but instead wants to encourage body positivity. And she delivers her message in hilarious technicolor on Instagram. She posts photos of herself in crazy outfits or funny poses — with ice cream, or trying to eat people.
While in Milan, where she appeared at fashion week for the Italian brand Furla, she posted a photo of her feet on the scale, approaching 100 kilograms. “Um ... did I eat too much pizza? I believe I weighed 45 kg before I came to Milan.”
It would be an understatement to say that Watanabe doesn’t take herself too seriously.
Watanabe had always wanted to be a comedian.
Against her mother’s wishes, she made her debut when she was 18. Three years later, she got her big break, appearing on a television show doing an outrageous Beyoncé impersonation. She soon became a regular on Japanese shows, lip-synching to Crazy in Love and earning the title “Japan’s Beyoncé.”
Her repertoire now includes Beyoncé’s Super Bowl routine and Lady Gaga impersonations.
In 2013, she became a regular cover girl for a new magazine aimed at plus-sized women, part of a trend to make “pocchari” — “marshmallow girls” — more accepted.
The following year she launched her own clothing brand, called Punyus, a play on the Japanese word for “squishy” or “bouncy.” The brand offers a range of cool styles, from street and hip hop to “kawaii” — Japanese cute.
The comedian says she’s noticed some change in attitudes even in the past few years.
“I see more women becoming super-strong and confident,” she said, “and it helps me grow, too.”