Is Kiritani Mirei the ideal body type?
Teen magazine Seventeen has courted controversy with its latest edition, in which high school boys give their opinion on their ideal girl.
When it came to a girl’s physical appearance, one comment noted that the ideal girl was 152cm (around 4 foot 11 inches) tall, and 37kg (81 pounds). This prompted an immediate online backlash from girls, who slated this ideal as “impossible”. 2ch netizens were equally pragmatic, with many suggesting that anyone that thin would be essentially undateable.
While the boy who made the comment probably had very little experience of the feminine form, and might therefore not be particularly well informed on what real girls and women actually look like, the magazine’s decision to publish numbers like these could have a significant influence on how their teenage readers perceive their own growing bodies.
Luckily, this time, girls weren’t afraid to fight back.
What do you think? Is it potentially damaging for a magazine to discuss ideal body types for young girls rather than showing them how to be healthy and happy as they are?
From Livedoor News:
The Ideal Girl Is “152cm, 37kg”; Girls Angry That Boys “Ignore Reality”
A netizen’s photo of the magazine spread.
The ideal body for a girl as seen by boys, which was featured in the latest edition of teen fashion magazine Seventeen (Shueisha), has created controversy online.
It seems that writing “152cm, 37kg” as the ideal height and weight for a girl has angered girls themselves.
“Impossible. Boys just don’t know anything”.
The August edition of Seventeen, which went on sale on July 1, has a special spread entitled “This Is Our Ideal Girl, Natsu”, where 11 boys, who were mainly high school students, commented from various angles on their ideal girl.
In the article there was an item on figures, and as the boys gave their image of an ideal body type, one high school boy insisted that “152cm, 37kg” was good.
When high school girls, shocked at this, started tweeting the picture from the magazine along with comments such as “Way too harsh wwwwww 37 kilos? Please! wwww you couldn’t survive www”, the shock spread online.
Ultimately this was just a comment made by one high school boy, but the numbers 152cm, 37kgs have stuck for the girls:
“Boys idealise too much”
Impossible. Boys just don’t get it”
“You’d have to take out your internal organs for sure”
“I cleared this level good and proper when I entered middle school”
Floods of comments like these, tinged with anger, were posted.
At the same time, as well as there being those who were worried about health issues like malnutrition and amenorrhea, there were also quite a few comments from boys who were disturbed by it, saying things like “Who’d want someone that scrawny…”
In this case, a girl would have a BMI index of 16, calculated from body weight and height, and therefore would be considered as “on the slim side” (for someone under twenty years of age). However, that doesn’t mean to say that a particular woman would be unhealthily slim, and even online there were a sprinkling of opinions that said “She’d probably be pretty small, but there are people like that out there”, “That’s not so different from me”, and “I’m living healthily at 161cm/43kg”.
“As Thin As Kiritani Mirei, With Breasts As Big As Kojiharu“
But surprisingly, the high school boys were even greedier when it came to their ideal, who is:
“As thin as Kiritani Mirei, with breasts as big as Kojiharu (Kojima Haruna from AKB48)“
Boys cited Kojima Haruna’s breast as being an ideal asset.
This truly was “cherry picking” from these two women who are extremely popular with young girls.
Kiritani, who has a slender body type, claims her height is 163.5cm and her body weight is 39kg (according to a profile from a 2010 article). Going by this, her BMI is a shocking 14.5. It seems that Kojima has not revealed her bust size, but she is known as being the biggest-breasted girl in AKB, and is rumoured to be a “D-Cup” among fans.
If you are a girl who is 152cm and 37kg, then without a doubt you will be dainty, but while you might be similar to Kiritani, to then also possess breasts to rival Kojima’s seems pretty difficult if you think about it realistically.
Articles about body weight in women’s magazines often cause controversy, so this is not an isolated case. In May 2013, the July edition of women’s fashion magazine CanCam put the spotlight on “Puni-ko”, girls who were chubby but not fat, saying that “Nowadays, Puni-ko get all the guys”, but this was slated online as a negative headline because women claimed the magazine’s criteria were strange.
Comments from 2ch.net:
毒霧(茨城県)＠＼(^o^)／:
Nope, that’s scrawny.
チンシンク(SB-iPhone)＠＼(^o^)／:
37 kilos would be way too scrawny (ヾﾉ･∀･`) just couldn’t do it.
ツームストンパイルドライバー(SB-iPhone)＠＼(^o^)／:
Scrawny.
She wouldn’t only have no body fat but no muscles either.
32文ロケット砲(西日本)＠＼(^o^)／:
37 kilos w
That’s an elementary school student, right?
河津落とし(滋賀県)＠＼(^o^)／:
Come on, no one ever said this www
If your body weight is in the thirties, I’ll give you the truth ww. Get some burgers down you.
アンクルホールド(新疆ウイグル自治区)＠＼(^o^)／:
152, 37kg — that’d be a complete freak, right?
フォーク攻撃(dion軍)＠＼(^o^)／:
37kg, that’s anorexia or something.
河津落とし(滋賀県)＠＼(^o^)／:
Look, men’s ideal is a body that curvy without being fat.
Girls are just going crazy with this scrawny supremacy stuff.
オリンピック予選スラム(神奈川県)＠＼(^o^)／:
Only a midget man would say that he wants a girl who is 152cm tall.
超竜ボム(庭)＠＼(^o^)／:
Bones.
Even 40kg would be too scrawny…
フロントネックロック(三重県)＠＼(^o^)／:
There is no girl who is 37kg…
カーフブランディング(長屋)＠＼(^o^)／:
What’s the height of the bastard who said a girl should be 152cm?
逆落とし(関東・甲信越)＠＼(^o^)／:
Thing is, you get a tiny little chick around 150, by the time she gets old she’s gonna be short and fat and there won’t be a damn thing she can do about it, so if you’re looking for a wife, a slim girl around 160 is probably gonna look good her whole life.
ムーンサルトプレス(長野県)＠＼(^o^)／:
This is normal…for anime characters.
アンクルホールド(空)＠＼(^o^)／:
Isn’t that too small?
Were those guys from some kind of dwarf club?
リバースネックブリーカー(WiMAX)＠＼(^o^)／:
If a girl was that size, it would be because she’d been dieting since she was a kid, right?
There are some small, scrawny girls who got that way through malnutrition.
Their legs are short and the balance of their bodies is bad, so even if they are small they’re not cute at all.
アンクルホールド(空)＠＼(^o^)／:
If you slept with her, her ribs would crack and her pelvis would creak.
How about it? Ideal, right?
かかと落とし(catv?)＠＼(^o^)／:
Under 160cm, over 80kg is ideal.
If you don’t got no meat then you ain’t no woman.
Certified chicken bones.
タイガースープレックス(埼玉県)＠＼(^o^)／:
Got to be 170cm, 55kg, with 95cm tits.
デンジャラスバックドロップ(やわらか銀行)＠＼(^o^)／:
Around 172cm and 58kg is good.
