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WSJ, 10/9/03

For Asian Women, Weight-Loss Rule 1 Is Skip the Gym

They Shun Hard-Body Look, Preferring Pills, Teas and Gels
By CRIS PRYSTAY and GEOFFREY A. FOWLER
Staff Reporters of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL


Umera Chan recently paid $2,300 to a masseuse who promised to knead a few inches off her 116 pound, 5-foot-5 frame. She also pops diet pills with dinner. But the willowy size-two Singaporean wouldn't dream of going to the gym.

"We all want to be slimmer. But not muscular like Demi Moore," says Ms. Chan, a 28-year-old boutique manager. "I don't think that looks very nice."

Across Asia, already-thin women are downing prescription diet pills, and paying a fair amount of money to join slimming centers that promote weight loss through throbbing electric shocks and pinching "face-slimming" machines. The goal: slim down without exercise. For many Asians, the tanned, buff bodies prized by Americans have an unwelcome air of the working class.

Constance Seck, a 33-year-old Singaporean corporate travel agent, worked out with a trainer for a year after her second child was born but quit the three-day-a-week regimen when friends began to notice her leg muscles. "I looked bulky. Muscles popped out everywhere -- my shoulders, my legs. My body wasn't very feminine," she says.

At De Beaute slimming salon in Singapore, Ms. Seck recently slipped out of a red sweater and settled onto a bed in a dimly lighted room. A technician wheeled over a squat "electro-stimulation" machine, which zaps a mild current that causes muscles to contract, and clamped electrodes to her arms, stomach and thighs. With the press of a keypad, and Ms. Seck's limbs began to twitch. "It's gentle," Ms. Seck proclaimed.


Ms. Seck says she has lost 31 pounds since she joined De Beaute, for which she has appeared in before-and-after photographs. Recently, she became a spokesmodel for the five-year-old company, which runs three salons in Singapore. Cutting carbohydrates from her diet at the same time she started sessions here "may have helped speed things up," she adds.

The traditional Chinese ideal of beauty emphasized not just pale bodies but tiny feet and hands. Today, the feminine ideal of weak and wan remains, even as women gain independence through their jobs. For some, staying slim is a way to reconcile that, psychologists say. In some women's magazines, slimming products and services make up 50% of the ads, according to a new study by the Hong Kong Eating Disorders Association.

Almost half the women in Hong Kong and China who responded to a survey conducted in August by market-research firm Taylor Nelson Sofres felt they were overweight or obese, even though only a quarter actually were, by medical definition. In the past eight years, Dr. Sing Lee, founder of the Hong Kong Eating Disorders Center, has seen a 20-fold increase in eating disorders, including anorexia.

The region's fitness industry is starting to gain ground -- but not nearly as fast as sales of diet pills and gadgets. "No crash diet, no rigorous exercise, no supplements to take," proclaims the Prettislim slimming center in Singapore. Singapore has 70 such centers, but only 30 gyms. In Hong Kong, 36% of women who have tried shedding weight used slimming teas, pills and gels, according to market researcher ACNielsen.

Prescription diet drugs approved and sold in the U.S. and Asia are readily available over the counter in China and Thailand. Even in Hong Kong and Singapore, where doctors dispense as well as prescribe drugs, patients say they can get whatever drugs they want.

Advertisers in Hong Kong spent nearly $24 million on spots for diet pills and slimming products from January through August of this year alone -- a 27% increase over the same period last year, according to Nielsen Media Research.

Public health officials are trying to crack down on health claims made for products available without prescriptions. Last month, Hong Kong's Health Department recommended that the city's legislature overhaul regulations. If the law is passed, police could confiscate products that make any of 25 banned misleading claims, including "promote firm muscle and beautiful body curve" and "excrete excess fat."

Over the past year, Hong Kong secretary Catherine Fung, 42, has tried a range of exercise-free techniques to slim down from 112 pounds to her ideal 102. Most recently, she has been tightening her muscles with a machine that promises a two-hour workout in just 30 minutes by sending small electrical pulses to muscles through a hand-held device -- while she is lying down. "It's like ironing," she says. "You just put it over the places you want to firm."

Outside of the office, she and her friends meet up for dinner or shopping. "We're too busy for exercise," says Ms. Fung. But they do find time to pore through magazine articles on slimming and swap notes on the latest hot treatments. Later this month, she's attending a free lecture that promises to tell her how to get Xenical, a Roche prescription drug for the extremely obese.

A million Hong Kong women are customers at beauty and slimming center Fancl House, whose ads for "Extra Slim-Up" tonic feature the 5-foot-10, 120-pound movie star Gigi Leung. Crashing a bowling ball into a set of pins representing excess weight, Ms. Leung implores women to "break 'n' burn!" away flab.

"It's a very, very competitive market, and slimming centers have a bigger marketing budget," says Selina Short, the marketing vice president for California Fitness, the region's biggest gym chain with 50,000 female members across five countries.

But gyms are making their move. Last month, California Fitness brokered a joint marketing deal with Fancl. The slimming company came up with ads showing people at the gyms drinking Extra Slim-Up, while California Fitness sent invitations for free gym trials to 100,000 of Fancl's frequent customers.

"These women, who are so concerned about image, had never experienced exercise before," Ms. Short says.