Walking down the New York Fashion Week runway wearing a C’EST D tartan miniskirt, P.S. Kaguya, 32, was one of the rare plus-size Asian models at the event. “Size 18, Asian, height 5 feet 5,” reads Kaguya’s modeling resume.
Back in 2015, when Kaguya first considered moving from behind the camera as a photographer to a new career in front of it, she thought she had something to offer. “I didn’t see any plus-size Asians in high fashion, so I decided to put myself out there,” she tells Teen Vogue.
It took six years of struggle in an industry that favors thin and Eurocentric for Kaguya to make it to New York Fashion Week. As a second-generation Korean American, she encountered constant resistance to her weight and stigmas about her identity. She quickly discovered, she says, that the same stereotypes associated with Asian women were reinforced for Asian models: to be petite and obedient.
Kaguya, on the other hand, is outspoken and determined to provide a positive role model for bigger women. “People never liked me,” she recalls. “I’m not skinny, not doing what a model minority should be doing. ”
Kaguya grew up in a traditional Asian family in Florida, where her parents worked at a local supermarket in an underserved neighborhood. As a child, Kaguya felt belittled all the time. She was the only Asian girl in preschool, was constantly bullied by her peers, and often called fatphobic and racist slurs.
Earlier in her life, Kaguya never thought of becoming a model. “As a photographer, I used to choose models based on a very shallow standard,” she says. “I thought that was what the industry wanted.”
But Kaguya started her modeling career in 2015, serendipitously, because she needed money to finish her last year studying photography at the School of Visual Arts. She posted some modeling photos on Craigslist, and a photographer agreed to pay her $50/hour for figure modeling, posing for art classes. “It was a lot of money for me at that time,” says Kaguya. “That’s how I started modeling.”
The modeling industry has not exactly been eager to accept models of Kaguya’s size. Only 48 out of 1,252 model appearances were plus-size in New York Fashion Week’s spring and summer 2022 season, according to Fashion Spot’s Diversity Report. The same report shows that 77% of the plus-size model appearances were models of color.
“In the casting calls, sometimes they literally ask for ‘Asian, slim, pale skin, long black hair, submissive,’” Kaguya says. “It’s the idea of homogenizing Asian women to look a certain way.”
“Asian models and women are often seen as docile, passive, or sexually alluring,” agrees Ashley Mears, a sociologist and the author of Pricing Beauty: The Making of a Fashion Model. “The industry is infatuated right now with ‘ethnic models,”’ says Mears, who has studied the modeling industry qualitatively since 2006. “This is a strange term that normalizes whiteness as an invisible category. The ‘good ones’ bookers are looking for turn out to fit within a very narrow frame of beauty defined by old colonial legacies of Western imperialism.”
Han Na Shin, a size-12, New York-based Asian model, has experiences that reflect this. She also shares that she got more bookings after she dyed her hair blonde. “They want some sort of exoticism, but not too much,” Shin says. “Blonde is the perfect touch.”
“Asian plus-size models are extremely underrepresented, and their presence in the industry is needed so more people can see themselves represented in the media,” says Briauna Mariah, the founder of We Speak Model Management, who signed Kaguya and Shin in 2019. The agency was founded in 2013 with hopes of breaking the stereotypical beauty standards. Currently, 11 out of the agency's 158 models represented identify as Asian, size six and over.
Some fashion mavens worry that the industry has already moved on from focusing on diverse representation. “There’s a token person of color used for campaigns, and when you request for a shoot, the talent that isn’t white is too often labeled ‘not on brand’ or doesn’t have ‘the right aesthetic,’” said Lindsay Peoples Wagner, the editor in chief of The Cut, in an interview with The New York Times in March. “Brands have gone for too long making token efforts and no real commitment to inclusivity.”
Britain’s first plus-size Asian model, Bishamber Das, 34, reflects on her experiences challenging what she calls “the white fashion rules.” “Brands are reactive, not proactive,” Das tells Teen Vogue. “They just want to ride what’s trending. They have the power to change the bias towards Asian community, but instead they chose to remain silent.”
Raised in a South Asian family in London, Das says that there was no one she could identify with when she started her modeling journey, in 2014. “Where are the girls from South Asia, one of the largest populations in the world?”
Yumi Nu, the first plus-size Asian model to appear on the cover of Vogue and Sports Illustrated, and one of the significant names in the body positivity movement, revealed the struggles she has faced in the industry. “Within Asian culture, there is this pressure to be a certain size and the generational pressure of body shaming from our grandmothers and mothers,” Nu said in an August interview with Vogue.
It wasn't until 2016 that Kaguya realized her modeling gigs might be influencing many young Asian women who don’t fit into the traditional beauty standard to feel more confident about their bodies. She says she has finally reached the point where she is reconciled with her body and has stopped retouching her photos.
Despite the hardships, plus-size Asian models have reached new milestones for representation, but the call for progress continues. “I’m just gonna keep on being me,” Kaguya says, smiling. “The entire societal standard and expectancy of how people like us should dress will not bother me anymore.”
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