Although Krieger, who tells his story in the New York Times magazine, has never worried much about his weight, their comments make him understandably self-conscious.

After borrowing a Winnie-the-Pooh scale from a neighbor under the pretext of weighing "something," I stood facing my bathroom's full-length mirror and mounted it. Above Pooh-san's serene, smiling face and the overflowing honey pot he held in his paws, the red digits on the scale's display climbed and flashed and finally settled. I was 21 pounds over my "official" weight.

But contrary to what he thinks, this isn't the tragedy - or the grievous insult - he's imagined. A friend clues him in.

"Oh, yeah," he said, "when I first came to Japan I couldn't believe how women teased me about being chubby, poking me and whatnot." But he said he figured out that it wasn't a put-down or an insult but actually more of a playful thing. "When they say a man has gained weight, it implies he's got someone new in his life," he said. "Some woman is feeding him and making him feel comfortable enough to let himself go a little. It makes him look healthy, because he's happy."...My Japanese tutor later told me that there's even a term for this - shiawase butori, "happily plump." It took me a while to get used to the concept, but over the next few weeks I began to think of my augmentation not as fat but as the stateliness of a bon vivant who defiantly shows the world he can suck the marrow - and the fatty tuna - out of life without fretting about caloric content.

In some ways, this playful attitude towards weight seems counterintuitive in a culture that, in the last few years, has instituted government-mandated weight standards to combat the spread of "metabo," or "metabolic syndrome." Eating disorders are on the rise amidst young Japanese women and in general a western attitude towards weight has followed close on the heels of western beauty ideals - and western junk food. But does this acceptance of shiawase butori extend to both sexes? Would a woman comment on another woman's weight gain with the same levity? I'm really interested to know - because hereabouts, while a man's gut is perfectly acceptable (some would say, fashionable!) and a man's ego can, in the popular imgination, survive a jibe at his physique - such a thing would be absolutely verboten if addressed to a woman, an implicit condemnation. When we talked about the alleged "gut trend" in young men, readers were quick to point out that such a fad would never be sanctioned amongst women; is the dichotomy as stark here? Is this attitude indicative of healthy acceptance - or ingrained double-standards? This is a charming piece - but it leaves me wanting to know more of the story.

A Weighty Matter [NY Times]
Eating Disorders on the Increase in Asia [Dimensions]
Japan, Seeking Trim Waists, Measures Millions [NY Times]
Changes In The Physiques Of Japanese Women [My Nippon]
Metabolic Syndrome May Affect 1 In 3 Japanese [WhatJapanThinks]

Earlier: New Trend: The Gut

Lera Boroditsky, an assistant psychology professor at Stanford University, has found that the language we speak may fundamentally change the way we see objects. If your first language is one with masculine and feminine nouns, then you very well may ascribe certain gender characteristics to inanimate things. Spanish speakers, for whom bridge is a masculine noun, are more likely to deem bridges "strong," "powerful," or "towering," while German speakers tend to call bridges "elegant," "slender," or even "fragile."

Boroditsky observed the same phenomenon with the work "key," which is masculine in German and feminine in Spanish. German speakers were more likely to call the key "hard," "heavy," "jagged," "metal," "serrated" and "useful." Spanish speakers came up with the adjectives "golden," "intricate," "little," "lovely," "shiny" and "tiny."

To test whether or not this would work on speakers of gender-neutral English, Boroditsky created her own language, called "Gumbuzi." She assigned various nouns with the prefix "oos" (masculine) or "soos" (feminine). Boroditsky taught a group of students — who spoke only English — her language for a single day. At the end of the day, she found that the students had already begun to internalize the grammar of her fake language. They started to attribute stereotypically feminine traits to the feminine nouns, and masculine attributes to the masculine things.

And this all happens without our knowing it. "You have no idea this is happening to you. You just think you are learning a way of talking, but really you are learning a whole way of seeing the world," Boroditsky said.

Shakespeare Had Roses All Wrong [NPR]

Okay. So...back to quarterlife crises. Somehow, it passed. Do they exist? I'm inclined to think: "no."

But then it happened again: I was 28, single following a long bout of monogamy, unemployed, broke...depressed beyond comprehension, depressed beyond my worst depressions in the past; at once rationally, because I was so much older this time, and irrationally, because I was actually wiser, too. And that's when the wacky flight attendant roommate came through the door from her latest trip to Bishkek. (True story!) "It's Saturn returning," she explained, and gave me some book about astrology. That night I went to a party and saw a friend from high school. "How have you been?" he asked, and I gave some face.

"Oh man, your Saturn's returning, that's the worst," he said. (Trend story alert: straight men who openly reference astrology; WTF.) But seriously, "Saturn Returning" was exponentially more ridiculous and melodramatic than "Quarterlife Crisis" — had we done no growing up in the intervening years? Had we actually been devolving? I began to think we were all just devolving, which was probably true. And then I thought, maybe confronting the sense of vulnerability that sends us into the arms of ridiculous concepts like "Saturn Returning" (and also, religion and the book Eat Pray Love) is just another part of the process. Maybe it's evolutionary biology, forcing us to manufacture these little existential crises every few years to confront the true nature of our hackneyed human condition to substitute for the kids we would otherwise be having.

And then I got a job and stopped thinking about any of this shit. Maybe these "crises" are just ...unemployment! I asked the Jezebels. They hadn't really had Quarterlife Crises, except for Dodai, when she was 25. How did she get past it? "I thought about moving to Hawaii and writing poetry," she said. "And then I got a job.

"Not very eloquent but seemed really sweet," our reader wrote.

And yeah, if you are wondering, got the same twinge learning that America Ferrerra was stumping for Hillary, even though it's probs because her mom is racist against blacks. (Oh Jesus, KIDDING.)

On days like this we remind ourselves any Democrat would be good right now.

Scarlett Johansson To Release Debut Album In May [Us Weekly]

Oh yeah! Here's what he said.

I have to go, but I won't let that come between us.

Anyway, so yeah, I have to leave now, but I could actually really give a shit about you at this point anymore. But damn, did I love you in that movie. I think of it every time I get my hair cut!