Body-Positive 'Chubby' J-Pop Groups Will Eat Whatever They Want

Earlier this year, Chubbiness, an all-girl group consisting of girls bigger than your average Japanese starlet stormed the J-Pop scene. The Chubbiness girls love to talk (and eat) food and their favorite “chubby” body parts. They’ve been quite the sensation, and they’re not the only puniko (“Marshmallow girl”) group.

La Big 3 is another similar girl group, consisting of three models featured in La Farfa, a Japanese plus-sized magazine that has all of the style. All of it. La Big 3 is all about body positivity—the title of their debut song “Pochative” is a portmanteau of “pocha,” meaning plump, and “positive.” The song and video definitely seems to take a page out of Meghan Trainor’s book, with the ’50s style and early ’60s pop sound, but they’re more about being happy eating whatever the fuck they want in that Japanese cute “fuwa fuwa” style as opposed to having assets that boys like to hold onto. Wall Street Journal reports:

“La Big 3 is a group of three girls who can sing, dance and make people smile,” according to an employee at the group’s management agency, Khive Co. “And combined, they weigh more than 200 kilograms [440 pounds].”

The Khive Co. representative seemed to be describing any other K-Pop group, you know, until s/he mentioned the weight. If the message is supposed to be about body positivity, shouldn’t their weight, even if it is collective, not matter? Maybe they’re including that info to show how much they don’t care? Or maybe it’s a Thing.

In the La Big 3 video as well as the Chubbiness video, the girls seem to be defined by, other than their body type, their ravenous appetites for foods like donuts, ice cream, candy, and fried meats. So honestly, I’m not sure how body positive these groups are given that their identities and some of their dance moves in their videos are restricted to their appetites and not much else. But on the other hand, how often do we see big happy women singing and dancing without a goddamn care in the world?