Ever since Kyla from Pristin debuted, I’ve been receiving lots of questions about her. Obviously interest in her is high because she’s part of Pledis’ hot new girl group Pristin as well as the new Kpopalypse sidebar girl for 2018.
It’s no secret: I am very unashamedly ideologically pro-Kyla. I’m fed up with all these stick-skinny idols and I would like to see more Korean pop idols debut who look like Pristin’s Kyla, I believe that all idols should obviously strive for a healthy weight range such as the one that Kyla exhibits and this would contribute greatly to the health of the k-pop industry overall. However, is my belief correct, or am I full of shit? How much does Kyla actually weigh? How can I request other idols to copy her weight if nobody even knows what it is? Also, is Kpopalypse telling the truth that Kyla’s weight range is actually healthy? Time for Kpopalypse to unravel the MYSTERIES OF KPOP and answer the burning questions that no other k-pop website dares to touch!
To answer this important question I firstly turned to my trusty friend, Google:
Surely trusted k-pop fans would know the answer? Reputable Tumblr blog alwaysdreaminghigh.com listed Kyla’s weight as… N/A?
They also said that she doesn’t have any hobbies, siblings, education or fans. This seems incorrect to me given that comments on true trufaxal super-true journalism site of truth Asian Junkie noted that he had a very SNS-active brother.
Unfortunately, her brother hasn’t yet reached out to Kpopalypse blog, but if he’d like an interview, he should do so immediately. Contact details here, my friend!
Back to the topic at hand, and it was clear that more investigation was necessary. Kprofiles.com had no listing for her weight at all, despite listing the weight of every other Pristin girl. However they did mention the following:
As they didn’t seem to know what her weight actually is, I’m uncertain how they can conclude a definite cause-effect relationship based on an unknown value. There seems to be something fundamentally mathematically wrong about this conclusion.
Wikipedia had no idea at all (better not ask for that $3 per month again until you do, guys) but Wattpad had a little bit more information:
Although they didn’t anglicise her name correctly (it’s “Solhee”), at least they found that her family was alive and well.
Above is the entry from nowkpop.com, who also had no idea. Below is an except from a “massive guide to Pristin and members“, and they were also clueless.
Fine, I guess I wasn’t going to find my answer here. Maybe if I narrowed my search:
Clearly I was not the only person who had been down this path. The results mainly led me to articles about her being harrassed. Here’s the articles I found:
The Buzzfeed of K-pop documented many instances of Kyla being called fat and generally being treated mean, but couldn’t tell anybody what her weight actually was.
Asian Junkie’s trufaxual articles of truth also highlighted much of the drama but didn’t talk about her specific weight.
A site I’d never heard of called United K-pop had an editorial about the hate she was receiving, but also had no idea what she actually weighed.
Of course Korean netizens had no clue and neither did Netizenbuzz, who I’m sure would jump to Kyla’s defense if… oh wait, Kyla’s not in Block B, is she? I guess not.
Even The Great Satan weighed in on the Kyla issue, but no hard data about her weight was given.
Defeated, I gave up. Clearly, nobody knew the answer. Drying my tears, knowing that I had failed to provide adequate Kyla defence, I turned to YouTube to watch Kyla images and pray for her recovery from her recent health issues.
But wait a second, what was that, at 0:40?
Not only was her weight clearly stated, but all of the other details were… well, more detailed than everywhere else. Clearly YouTuber Kbeat1st knows their stuff when it comes to Kyla. Could it be true that Kyla was within a completely normal healthy weight range, as suspected by Kpopalypse? Time to analyse Kyla’s body mass index to get the trufax. Her height of 165cm was already well-documented – how heavy should someone of this height be?
Using the Body Mass Index calculator here gave me the truth. However I wasn’t going to stop here. Kpopalypse always goes the extra mile to search for a second opinion when researching.
In fact, according to several health websites Kyla is if anything on the skinny side of average.
Far from losing weight, this site’s calculator suggested that Kyla should actually consider gaining a few pounds to reach ideal healthy weight range! Gosh, what will netizens think? Oh wait, nobody cares.
Of course, these are calcualtions gained from completely normal, rational medically-sound websites accredited by medical professionals. Never mind those – what do horrible diet sites making money off human misery think?
Even Jenny Craig agreed with the medical professionals that Kyla in fact veering toward underweight. But would Kyla be accepted by the nutter pro-ana extremist crowd?
Calculating Kyla with this above calculation: 165 – 100 = 65 x 0.9 = 58.5 kg – the general Japanese idol maximum weight is still above Kyla’s weight by 4.5 kg.
Using the more extreme Momoiro Clover Z J-idol calculation: 165 – 100 = 65 x 0.8 = 52 kg – under Kyla, by only 1kg.
But there’s more!
Using the “Korean chart” (I found it on more than one pro-ana site but I have no idea of the actual source for it), the ideal weight for someone of Kyla’s height according to wacky pro-ana standards is once again just 52kg – the same as the Momoiro Clover Z calculation (which I also don’t have a source for) and also only 1kg less than Kyla’s actual weight. The pro-ana author of this blog was actually 7.4kg over her target “cray-cray” weight, far further from her goal than Kyla!
The conclusion: Kyla is medically healthy (unless you’re an idiot) and Kpopalypse is right, once again.
(Regular readers will also note that the Kpopalypse fanfic “Any Armys Here?” featured a k-pop trainee girl who was bullied and humiliated for weighing exactly 53.1kg. Life imitating art, or super Boram ESP powers striking again? Leave comments and wild speculations below!)
sorry to say it, but agencies (assuming that unsourced video is getting its info from the agency) lie about things like male idols’ height all the time, so it’s not unconceivable they’d lie about kyla’s weight too.
i know a girl who’s the same height who says she’s 50 kg. m8 let me tell you, it does not look like there are 3 kg of difference between these two girls.
When agencies lie about weight, they tend to lie in small increments, otherwise it’s too easy to be caught out. For Kyla to have a BMI that falls into the medically overweight range she’d have to be 15kg heavier than claimed. Maybe there’s 5kg of lying there at the most, certainly not 15kg.
yeah, you’re probably right. i didn’t really dig deep into how much difference in weight it would take to make her overweight. i guess she’s just one of those people whose fat distrubites itself in really unflattering ways. because to me, and a lot of people she is just really not aesthetically pleasing to look at, regardless of how much she weighs. if you told me she weighs 40 kg, i still wouldn’t like her.
i know it might seem like i’m trolling but i’m not. this is honestly one of the first times i’ve seen so many western fans be critical of an idol’s appearence and i think there’s something to that.
It’s a good thing that other people don’t have to like her for me to like her.
likewise
I am sorry but I think you are wrong on that one. I am 166cm tall and I weight 52 kilos. There is no way Kyla is only one kilogram heavier than me, even if she stores all her weight in unflattering places. I look way closer a regular skinny idol, especially in the arms and legs area, than I do Kyla. (I am not bragging though, my face is busted compared to all these girls).
I personally think she’s clearly on the heavier side of healthy or low side of fat. If she really is 165 cm, I would be astonished if she weighed less anything less than 65 kilograms. I am not hating on her, I am just talking as an 18 year old whose weight at 16 was around 50 kilos.
Ideal height/weight charts date back to time in Europe when everyone was malnourished (and, as a result, shorter than today). They really aren’t that applicable today.
These Internet BMI calculators don’t take into account muscle vs fat —
muscle is quite a bit denser, so athletes tend to end up on the heavier end of the scale. When Michael Jordan was winning championships, he weighed 216 lbs (at 6’6″) which gave him a BMI of 25, Serena Williams at 5’9″ and 155 lbs has a BMI of 22.9. If Kyla is overweight at 19.5, these too top athletes must have been obese. And Girl Groups and Boy Groups are athletes (I’m not sure how rigorous Pristin’s dance routines are, but even a relatively mild routine practiced multiple hours a day is a work-out).
Besides, women are supposed to have slightly different distributions of weight than men — it shouldn’t be possible to confuse a young woman’s body with the body of a teen-aged boy in the dark.
WTF are you trying to say and how is it relevant to my comment?
BMI and appearance aren’t 100% correlated: some people have a different fat mass at the same weight. I too, have a BMI of 19.5 (with a different height) and look heavier than Kyla when photographed/filmed. This is because I have a fat percentage around 26% – so I’m on the lower range of the “acceptable” range of body fat percentage, not in the “athletic” categories. It’s mostly a health issue if your fat percentage climbs above 32% in women, so even if she was at my level of skinnyfatness, she would be at a healthy body-fat percentage. I would be shocked if there is anything unhealthy about her weight, and I wouldn’t be surprised if the weight listed is (vaguely) accurate.
I am very glad to see you’ve posted an article where Kyla’s weight is evaluated rationally through every point on the spectrum from medical websites to diet-industry shills’ platforms to pro-anorexia forums. Of course your 95.7% success rate of trufax accuracy as well as your uncanny ESP powers remain undisputed. Really like how this post covers all its bases so that even the harshest nay-sayer or Kyla-hater would be forced to take a moment to think and reflect on how unrealistic their weight demands are and how needlessly hurtful they have been. People’s weight fluctuates, that is normal and not a reason to push someone to the brink of depression under the guise of ‘concern for health’. I can only hope by some miracle your writing gets translated into Korean by a Pristin fan and posted for all knetz to read.
The only points I would like to make are that
1. In your post you could’ve also mentioned or linked to articles about how the camera alters one’s appearance and does add the impression of excess volume on a person, as well as an article illustrating how the same numerical weight on a person looks completely different when parsed through the 9 main body types/shapes, and you could have also used your keen fashion know-how to illustrate how improper styling of a fuller figure can turn one from a solid 9.5 to a 0 just with bad clothing choices.(P.S. I miss Kpopalypse Fashion Class)
2. Most singers both male and female lie about their weight and height, and their agencies perpetuate those lies in their profiles, hence why variety shows clamor for pretexts to reveal ‘the truth’ about them since high-heels and elevator doublelifts are only the beginning of artifice.
3. The pro-ana chart you mentioned is somewhat outdated and unfortunately reality is much harsher than those charts. Most K-pop singers seem to go with the ‘-20 rule’ for the height weight difference [ex: Stellar’s Hyoeun is officially listed as 170cm 48kg (-22), but is said to truly be 168cm 41kg(-27)], whereas J-pop is more ‘lenient’ with -15, but they still favour and encourage lower weight [ex: Nanase Aikawa 157cm 39kg, Amuro Namie 157cm 40kgs, Tsuchiya Anna 168cm 50kg, Tomomi Itano 153cm 36kg etc]. For reference, “Japan’s very first “marshmallow” idol group”, Chubbiness, has 9 girls and their count is -3 (161cm 58kg) vs +3 (156cm 59kg). Let this thought sink in. Heartbreaking.
In closing I would like to thank Kpopalypse for existing, creating the Kpopalypse blog, and always striving to bring the trufax to light despite occasional questionable sways. Gonna go share this post with some tumblrs. Ajuu!
did not read any of that
I always think comments on those netizen sources are bizarre but people are actually coming here saying she’s unhealthy fat, which gives me two options: they are sheep minded and just going with the flow or they have never seen an unhealthy fat (obese) person in their lives.
I guess camera teally adds about 10 pounds then
I don’t think that’s her real weight… Siyeon is 1.63cm and weights 51kg, meaning that her BMI is 19.2, almost the same as Kyla. Yet they look completely different side to side.
It’s undeniable that Kyla is at the very least overweight, and while I agree that she doesn’t need to lose weight if she doesn’t want to, it really irks me when people say she’s not overweight, because that’s clearly not true.
Kyla is cute.
Ah, Kpop: the land where having any bit of tummy fat means you are overweight. I wouldn’t survive idol life for a lot of reasons, but it’s always good to know my inability to weigh more than 45kg would be an actual benefit in the Kpop industry.
Wow kpop fans really lose touch with reality if they think Kyla is even “medically” overweight.
As for those who think Klya should lose weight to fit industry standards, I’m sorry they’re so herd minded that they let arbitrary rules on the other side of the world control they’re morals/preferences.
I love that when I was 17, 5’4 and 110 lbs, I was eating one small meal a day, yet i’d still be considered healthy by kpop fans.
I took my weight investigation in a different direction. Below is the results of some investigation of idols’ real weights vs. “official profiles” and the resulting BMI. Using a small sample group, we can create a guideline for Kyla’s weight and BMI.
Some female idols’ weights were calculated secretly on a variety show back in February 2016. Hani was on the show; this was the time Hani was least fappable, since she just lost a LOT of weight. Since the idols were actually weighed and it’s not just what the company asserts, we can get an idea of K-Pop idol BMIs.
EXID Hani: official profile weight = 50kg
168cm, 50kg = 17.7 BMI
AOA Jimin: official profile weight = 43kg
160cm, 46kg = 18.0 BMI
Fiestar Cao Lu: official profile weight = 47kg
166cm, 49kg = 17.8 BMI
EXID Solji: official profile weight = Not listed
170cm, 50kg = 17.3 BMI
Hello Venus Nara: official profile weight = 50kg
172cm, 53kg = 17.9 BMI
Park Bo Ram: official profile weight = 45kg
165cm, 50kg = 18.4 BMI
So let’s say a 17 – 18 BMI is standard for female idols in groups, which is underweight. Let’s extend it to 18.5 for soloists. The average “official weight” is off by 2.6 without Youngji (below) and 3.3 including Youngji.
Then there was the one outlier, Youngji, who occasionally got/gets shit for her weight, but not nearly to the extent of Kyla.
KARA Youngji: official profile weight = 49kg
166cm, 56kg = 20.3 BMI (so on the lighter side of a healthy weight)
Youngji and Kyla are only separated by 1cm.,, Let’s assume that Kyla’s “official weight” is off by the above averages…
2.6kg
165cm, 55.6kg = 20.4 BMI
3.3kg
165cm, 56.3kg = 20.7 BMI
The healthy BMI range for Asians is 18.5 – 22.9kg
If you average that out, you find that 20.7 is exactly dead center for what is a healthy weight for Asians.
So using the best available data (even if it’s a small sample size), Kyla is either at a perfectly healthy weight and BMI or towards the lighter side of healthy. The camera adds a lot of weight, which leads to celebrities being underweight so they look better on camera. The situation is not that Kyla is far; it’s that we have normalized and idealized underweight idols, because that is what is constantly shown to us.
No way that’s a real weight, anyway do shindong next
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If even a kpopalypse article on this issue can have these sorts of comments, i can imagine how shit-fucking serious the comments section is everywhere else.
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