KEY POINTS
- K-Pop entertainment companies reportedly watch the weight of their artists
- Other idols allegedly starve themselves or go on extreme diets to reach the “ideal” weight
- A member of Girl’s Day shared she went back home after weighing 53 kg (117 lbs)
Yura from Girl’s Day revealed one incident where she needed to go home to Ulsan after being kicked out by her CEO for weighing two kilograms over her “ideal” weight.
When Yura appeared as a guest on “Knowing Bros,” she talked about weighing 53 kg (117 lbs) in the early years of her career. Although she was relatively thin, as pointed out by the cast of the South Korean variety show, her CEO thought otherwise.
According to Yura, who was 170 cm tall, her CEO documented her weight and told her to lose nearly five pounds for her weight to drop to 51 kg.
Although Yura tried to negotiate if she could just lose one kilogram instead, her CEO reportedly got angry and told her to go back to her hometown.
“He told me not to come back from Ulsan until I’m 51 kg. I went back to Ulsan crying. I got kicked out,” Yura recounted their conversation.
This happened during Girl’s Day’s “Twinkle Twinkle” era. To stay an idol, Yura revealed that she only ate greens for five days straight while in Ulsan to lose the extra weight.
The extreme diet helped her achieve her weight goal, and she was able to return to Seoul and her girl group.
Knowing how much Yura did her best to maintain the “ideal” weight required of her by her CEO and how much she cried after being kicked out, her mom assured her that she could always return home when she needed to be taken care of.
“Whenever we miss you, you can gain weight. If you come home, I can take care of you,” Yura shared what her mom told her.
In June, a YouTuber with the handle “K썩은물” — which means K Rotten Water in English — uploaded a video on her channel, comparing second-generation and fourth-generation female K-pop idols from Girls Generation, 2NE1, Blackpink, Red Velvet, NewJeans, aespa, IVE and more.
The YouTuber pointed out in the clip that the younger artists appear thinner to the point where their rib cages become pretty defined.
It then sparked an online debate among the K-pop community on whether or not their thin physique is still healthy or is now the standard beauty in society.
“I’ve seen it somewhere, and as the general public increasingly prefers being skinny like celebrities, celebrities have to be thinner than that, so they say they’re getting thinner,” one user said in an online forum, adding that she believed “social perception” was the main cause for losing too much weight.
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