Japanese Fitness App Insults You While You Work Out.

Those who know me well know of my absolute love for anime and manga. No, not Japan. I do not agree with some of their cultural practices but I do love them for their anime and manga. That's where I draw my line. Visiting the Akibahara one day is sort of a daydream of mine.

But Japan has some appalling weaknesses - treatment of women especially. Many women are choosing the single life over marriage because they lose their worth as a person after getting married and is expected to serve her husband and his family. Not much different from my own South Indian culture.

Meet Nensho! For Girls. The original version was intended for as a fitness app for guys with pretty cutesy girls cheering him on as he works out. So the female counterpart was released. With macabre intentions in mind.

What better to lose weight fast than a bunch of good looking anime boys insults you with fat-phobic slurs and ultimately falls in love with you after you lose your target weight? Why is that the masculine app of this has positive reinforcements in the form of cutesy animated girls being supportive but the feminine app form has abusive underpinnings? What kind of Scumbag Steve are you conditioning your Japanese girls to see as the ideal boyfriend archetype? A pretty looking boy who insults you into thinness, but excused because he's beautifully animated? How does this even remotely make sense? 

Here's a sample of the audio available in the app:

“Hey, fattie,”

“You do know there’s a limit to being well-rounded, don’t you?”

Eating disorders is on the alarming rise in Japan among the females, of all ages, some start as young as 12. 

This would end only in disaster when it comes to their mental health. In a circuitous perception, you would condition girls to believe from a very young age their most important asset is their bodies (Brumberg, 1997). 

Does fat-phobic mainstream products really need to be conjured to further deteriorate your girls' mental health?? Or is the government propagating this eating disorder as a method to consolidate their anti-obesity campaign? Dreadful.

To think that back in Heian-era, a fat woman was considered a beautiful woman. Just read Genji Monogatari, which was written in the Heian-era, it describes women with with apple-plump cheeks and large build as 'beautiful' because it was a sign of health.

I am not here to propagate fatness, I am merely saying it is never right to criminalize one's weight using societal standards as an excuse.

This is truly disappointing. Well, I guess right and wrong is exclusive to culture. Just hope they don't extend that to outside. But given how ethnocentric Japan is, that is highly unlikely.

Nensho! For Girls - (Source)
Cited chapter in the book - The Body's New Timetable, (Brumberg, 1997)