Over half of high school girls view themselves as fat

April 3, 2018

Tokyo- Over 50 percent of Japanese high school girls view themselves as fat, even though the country had the lowest proportion of such students categorized as obese when compared with the United States, China and South Korea, a survey has shown.

According to the survey announced Friday by the National Institution for Youth Education, the proportion of female students in Japan who thought that they were either a little fat or obese stood at 51.9 percent.

The proportion of obese high school girls in Japan was 2.7 percent, while the share in the other three nations ranged between 6.1 percent and 20 percent.

Meanwhile, high school girls who answered that they were either satisfied or somewhat content with their figure came to 23 percent in Japan, while the figure stood at 60.5 percent in the United States, at 40.5 percent in China and at 31.6 percent in South Korea.

"Japanese people have a side that is more concerned about other people's evaluations rather than the facts about themselves," Yoichi Akashi, director at the institution's research center for youth education, said.

The survey, which was on the mental and physical health of high school students in four countries, was carried out between September and November last year. It received valid responses from 8,480 female and male students.

The survey also asked respondents whether they thought that they were valuable beings. In Japan, 44.9 percent of respondents answered that they either agreed or somewhat agreed, up 8.8 percentage points from seven years ago. Respondents in the United States, China and South Korea who gave the same answers stood between 80.2 percent and 83.8 percent.

"While self-affirmation among Japanese high school students is improving slightly, it has a long way to go," Akashi said. Jiji Press