“I dare you, watch me as I undress,” sings actor Ross Nasir in a Singapore musical comedy about dating as a plus-size woman, highlighting a nascent fat acceptance movement in a city-state that once forced children to join weight loss programs.
“Fat-shaming”—discrimination based on weight—is still common in Singapore and across Asia, activists say, but there are signs that the traditional view that only slim can be beautiful is being challenged.
“It just took a longer time for people in Asia to get used to fat acceptance, but it’s growing,” explains the 35-year-old, whose show Big Brown Girl shines a light on the prejudices curvy women face when looking for love.
While many Western countries have seen diverse body shapes in advertising campaigns and fuller-figured models such as Ashley Graham and Paloma Elsesser, Asia is still seen as lagging behind.
Singapore’s controversial scheme to weigh schoolchildren and send those regarded as overweight to join mandatory fitness programmes ran from the 1990s to 2007 — but some feel it reinforced prejudices that linger on today.
Activist Aarti Olivia Dubey, who has more than 30,000 followers on her Instagram account “curvesbecomeher”, says: “When it comes to our unconscious biases, when it comes to weight stigma, it’s still very much a problem.”
And while the anonymity of the online world can encourage vitriol from trolls, social media is also helping drive change.
Dubey is among a new generation of influencers on TikTok and Instagram, reaching a global audience with body positive messaging.
Dubey says shows such as Big Brown Girl are also a sign society’s attitudes are slowly changing.
The play, commissioned by Esplanade, Singapore’s national performing arts centre, lets the audience choose which dates Ruby goes on out of 10 potential scenarios, in Singapore and overseas.
The comedy is based on the experiences of Nasir, co-writer and director Melissa Sim, and other stories they have gathered over the years.
“When you think of dating or love story or romance, you don’t automatically think of it from a perspective of a bigger person,” Nasir says.
“When we don’t see someone who is similar to our shape and size and colour you begin to think that maybe these things don’t happen for these sorts of people—but they do.”
The production also touches on the issue of race as Nasir is a member of the ethnic Malay community, a minority in predominantly ethnic Chinese Singapore.
“Being brown also has its difficulties” in Singapore, she concedes.
Finding love can be “a little bit harder for someone who is a little bit bigger, or comes from a minority group,” she added.
The success of Big Brown Girl follows the 2021 hit show The Other F Word, a one-woman autobiographical show by plus-size actor Miriam Cheong.