Chubby, famous in a thin nation
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, the 29-yearold 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.
In this country of overwhelmingly thin women, Watanabe is challenging deeply ingrained perceptions about body image, showing that it’s possible to be confident even if you don’t look like a chopstick.
“Japan is not like the U.S. You don’t see many plussized 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 3 per cent of Japanese women are classified as obese, according to the World Health Organization, compared with 34.9 per cent in the U.S. The government even has a law setting out maximum waist sizes for company employees over the age of 40: 33.5 inches for men and 35.4 inches for women.
But many young women are dangerously thin. Government health data shows that 22 per cent of Japanese women in their 20s can be categorized as underweight or malnourished.
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.
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.”
Another photo, posted on her 29th birthday, showed her in a swimming pool wearing a pink bathing suit with bagels on the breasts. It got more than 620,000 likes, earning her the title “Most Valued Instagrammer” in Japan last year.
It would be an understatement to say Watanabe doesn’t take herself too seriously. Asked who she’d want to play her in a film, she said Arnold Schwarzenegger or perhaps John Travolta, since he can sing and dance. She was named one of Vogue Japan’s “Women of the Year” in 2016.
Watanabe, who was born to a Taiwanese mother and Japanese father who divorced when she was young, had always wanted to be a comedian. Against her mother’s wishes, she made her debut when she was18.
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, earning the title “Japan’s Beyoncé.”
In 2014, she launched a clothing line called Punyus, a play on the Japanese word for “squishy” or “bouncy.”
Watanabe has noticed some attitude changes in the last few years. Still, she shies away from calling herself a feminist. “I’m not like Beyoncé, being a powerful woman,” she said, letting out a roar and raising her arm as if to flex her muscles.