México || 세훈

14 | catorce

14 | catorce

All through the photo shoot Florencia felt out of place. She was the only Mexican idol in a room full of Korean pop stars. She had also become subconscious when the photographer--who didn't know her name and didn't even bother to learn it--kept calling her chubby and pointing to her each time he wanted her to move somewhere. She tried to ignore it at first and didn't respond to the nickname, but he had gone as far as to stopping everything, walking up to her, and grabbing her by the arm. "I'm talking to you, yeoja." He told her in somewhat broken English.

Even so, she was placed smack dab in the middle of everyone in the shoot and the commercial that was filmed, to showcase the fact that they had expanded into including a new idol who was non-Korean and even non-Asian. Florencia tried to be professional about it--she had been called fat before, sometimes the press in her country could be ruthless when she gained some weight--but it was more difficult to ignore it and pretend it didn't bother her. She was in a new country, all by herself and she didn't want to let anything intimidate her. But she knew beauty standards were different and that being different would get her signaled out.

After a couple of hours everyone was released, but Florencia was stopped by one of the managers. It was the manager that had been assigned to her while she was in Korea. He gestured for her to follow him and they went off to the side where there was a small woman with round shaped glasses adorning her face. Her hair was jet black and cut into a bob. She was wearing a white lab coat and she smiled slightly as he introduced them. 

"Kkot, this is Dr. Lee." He gestured to the small woman standing in front of them. "The agency has decided to bring in a doctor to help you with your problem."

Florencia immediately shot him a look.

She had gotten a physical exam done as soon as she joined SM Entertainment and they had informed her that she was in excellent health. Now she was being told she needed a doctor to help with her problem. It didn't make any sense to her.

"What problem?" The twenty year old wondered, her face contorting in confusion. And even then, she was still beautiful, her green eyes bright but scrunched up as she tried to put together what he was trying to tell her. 

"Your weight problem." Her manager informed her simply.

Florencia couldn't help but scoff at that. "I'm sorry, but I didn't know I had a weight problem."

She was five feet and three inches tall. When dieting for beauty pageants, she and her team had looked up the ideal weight for her height. For a person of small frame, her ideal target weight was anywhere from one hundred and eleven pounds to one hundred and twenty four. Anything less than that would have made her underweight. Florencia weighed a hundred and twelve pounds and had gained about two pounds after arriving in Korea. Even then she was on the thinner side of the ideal weight for a woman her height. But the other SM girls were about her height and appeared even thinner.

The managers wanted her to weigh the same so that she wouldn't look heavier standing next to them in photoshoots. "That's exactly why we brought in a professional." The manager explained. "The ideal weight for a woman your height in Korea is ninety seven pounds. That means you are seventeen pounds over weight. That's a whole dress size."

"But I'm not even Korean." Florencia argued. She was outraged that she was basically being told that she needed to starve herself to be pretty and perfect. "Besides, I didn't win my Miss Universe title looking like a cadaver." We didn't win the title three times out of luck.

"Don't you want to look good for your boyfriend?" The manager tried to reason with her.

Yet another thing that made her blood boil.