Geunyeoui Muge (2003)

The Weight of Her is a short film from nearly 20 years ago that I stumbled across. I truly hope that attitudes have changed about girls and women and their appearances since this was made.

The story follows a slightly overweight high school girl who is constantly judged for her weight not only by other students but by the teachers as well. Her friend who took diet pills and lost weight was praised. She, however, was constantly criticized and told she'd never find a job or a man because she weighs over 50 kg.

The girls are weighed in class as the male teacher makes derogatory comments about them. At one point when a very overweight male teacher derides the FL for weighing too much she calls him on it. He tells her it doesn't matter how men look, women are the ones with the problem.

Fat shaming, shaming for double-eyelids, all appearance related bombs lodged at young women, destroying their self-esteem and causing them to do unhealthy things to try and be ultra-slim. Instead of building them up, and training them to be competent and confident, they are told their self-worth is in how they look and how much they weigh. The focus was never on teaching them to be healthy in body and mind, and to develop their skills so that they would be able to find a good job because they were qualified, not because they were thin and pretty.

I found this very difficult to watch because defining women by their looks and size is destructive and the society loses out on creative, intelligent people in the work force simply because they aren't attractive enough for the men who hire them.

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