On the 8th, in the ‘SBS Special’ high-quality documentary ‘Bodymentary - Confession About ’Fat‘’, five female stars including Kim Wan-sun, Han Seung-yeon, Jeon Hyo-sung, Soyou, and Hwasa will gather to confess their true feelings about ‘Fat’.

Soyou has been dreaming of becoming a singer since she was young, singing in Jeju‘s tangerine fields. There was an unexpected obstacle on the path to becoming a singer who believed that singing skills were enough. ‘Height-less-body-120’, which followed like an idol’s formula - refers to the harsh standard that when you subtract weight from height, the result should be 120. Soyou calmly recalled the day when she worried that her weight would increase just with the IV drip she received in the emergency room, even after making the debut she had dreamed of. She said, “At that time, the weight set by my agency was 48kg. ”I have no choice but to not eat to get that weight at 168cm tall,“ she confessed.

”When people think of Jeon Hyo-seong, everyone thinks of her body, so ‘I don’t want to lose this love‘ became my life goal,“ said Jeon Hyo-seong, who wore 15cm heels and tightened her entire body with push-up bras and other corrective underwear to achieve a perfect body. For her, who has flat feet, the waning public love was more painful than the excessively high heels and corrective underwear that hindered blood circulation. Looking back on the precarious days she ran through with her bare feet, what kind of realizations did she gain?

Han Seung-yeon revealed that she had an incurable disease, saying, ”When I gained weight, I was 46kg. I lost 4kg more, and then I fainted.“ Han Seung-yeon was called the epitome of girl groups for her ’doll-like‘ looks. She created a Hallyu craze with the success of ’Mister,‘ but she says that glory was followed by painful memories. It is said that in order to wear low-rise pants and short tops, one cannot have even a little bit of belly fat. Han Seung-yeon, who became obsessed with being thin, even developed an incurable disease. I came here in the hope that no one will repeat the same mistake.

Kim Wan-sun, who caused a sensation in the pop music industry in the late 80s and opened the era of full-fledged video-type singers, was no exception. She had such a rough heyday that she would go on stage just a week after suffering a major traffic accident that she would quickly eat ice cream or a biscuit and go on stage. She even said that her weight dropped to 30kg at one point. She looked back and said, “I couldn’t eat so much that my colleagues said, ‘I wish I could see her eat.’”

They confessed to the times when they were the hungriest, as they were the brightest. Back then, when I felt ‘shame’ for not achieving the ‘shame’ of weight, but now, nothing much has changed with the passage of time. They say that they are in the process of finding the ‘me’ that they lost throughout this process.

Hwa Sa seems to love herself more than anyone else, but she too could not escape the stereotypical beauty standards. She says, “There is a standard of beauty that is impossible to reach. It is something that I can never achieve no matter how hard I try“, and she tells us what motivated her to live ‘like Hwa Sa’, after losing herself along with weight by forcibly taking pills to empty her stomach.

After all the confessions were made, they asked us the last question. “How about you?”

The SBS Special ‘Body Mentor - Confessions About ’Fat‘’, which is the honest confession of five people and ultimately the story of all of us, will air on Sunday, December 8th at 11:05 PM.

Jeon Hyo-jin, Donga.com reporter jhj@donga.com