Marcel Winatschek

Chubbiness

Avex just launched a girl group called Chubbiness built around the Marshmallow Girls market - guys in Japan who want women with actual body mass. That a major record label invested in a full group around this demographic tells you something about how granular markets get when there’s money in them.

The gap in what counts as plus-size across cultures is wild. Japan’s version of curvy doesn’t register in most Western contexts. These categories don’t exist until someone figures out how to profit from them.

What’s clear about it is the mechanism. Your body becomes visible as a category, someone calculates its market value, they package that appeal as a girl group, and you’re a demographic. It’s cynical but not secret. It’s just how it works.