Donghee steps onto the scale and takes a deep breath. She has decided that today she will be skinny, that today she will not look down at the numbers ticking through the pounds until she’s sure that she has wished the weight away. It has to work, she’s been working too hard for it not to do something. She closes her eyes and does her best to feel weightless.

The first time Donghee auditions it’s at a no name company in the backwaters of Gangnam and no one else shows up. She is led before a lone judge who barely glances at her before cueing the music and staring, blank faced as she works through her forty seconds.

She doesn’t really remember how well she did, but she remembers forty seconds feeling like an unbearably long time under the judging eyes of a stranger.

He asks some questions and she answers as confidently as she can, but in the empty room her voice feels weak and the building seems haunted. The judge thanks her and shows her to the door and all told the process takes less than half an hour.

Donghee spends the whole ride home trying to shift her suspicions that she wasn’t exactly what they were looking for, but only when she hasn’t heard back in three weeks does she realise that he never took her number.

Donghee in her stomach, breathes out as far as possible and imagines herself floating. She feels her body peel away from the arms hanging limp at her side and hopes she’s doing it right – oxygen can be so heavy after all.

The number of deadbeat companies that Donghee works her way through in her quest for a steady contract is world record worthy, or at least Donghee thinks so. She seems to spend more time in rented offices than in school and more time waiting by the phone than seeing any of her friends.

Her mother thinks it’s unhealthy, but Donghee knows that before you get anywhere in this industry you have to spend a lot of time scrounging through . Some people make it into one of the big name companies straight away but she isn’t fool enough to suspect that she’ll be one of them and so she perfects her audition technique in front of people whose opinion she only ever meant to use as constructive criticism.

So far she has received no call-backs, save for the few companies nice enough to tell her that she had failed to pass muster.

At first she thinks it must be a problem with the way she presents herself – lacking confidence or a dance routine not up to par. But as time goes by and she hears tales of more and more girls she knows are less talented and less confident than her signing contracts, she starts to suspect it’s something else and it’s not until she’s standing in front of the judging panel of Cube Entertainment that it occurs to her what that might be.

“Have you ever considered becoming a comedienne?”

Comedy. Thin girls become idols and fat girls do comedy, fat girls make jokes about how they eat constantly and no man will ever find them attractive. It’s degrading, but staring at herself in the mirror that night Donghee knows it’s what every other judge from every other company must have been thinking.

Donghee hands her mother a new diet plan and adds an extra hour to her gym schedule.

Slowly, Donghee tips her head till she knows her eyes will open to see the number on the scale right in front of them. She visualises the digits falling below sixty kilograms, decides that if she can see it in her mind’s eye then it must be true.

The SM Entertainment audition is both a last ditch attempt at the big time and Donghee’s moment of glory, or so she thinks before she shows up on the day. It’s a world away from the unheard of back alleys of those first few auditions and she falls into line surrounded by bright eyed boys and girls, most of whom she’s sure will be auditioning for the first time today. She finds a sick sense of satisfaction knowing that every last one of them is going to it up and go scurrying back home with their flimsy dreams shattered.

Donghee waits in line and chooses not to pay any attention to the waistline of anyone else in the room. She’s been working out and dieting like calories could kill her but it doesn’t seem to do much good; her bones are heavy below her skin and there is nothing she can do about that. Still, she’s talented and with the right help from the right surgeon she knows she could be pretty she just knows it.

“Lee Donghee!” a severe looking woman calls from the other end of the room. Donghee walks over to her and feels the eyes of every other auditionee on her as she goes. She can’t actually hear any laughter, but she knows it’s only being suppressed. The women frowns at her from behind a clipboard and shows her through.

There are two judges waiting to see her, both male, flicking through her file like they’d rather be doing just about anything else, Donghee bows once and then walks with her back straight to the centre of the room,

“Hello, my name is Lee Donghee I’m – “

“The fat girl,” the first judge cuts in. Donghee is too startled to even breathe.

“We’re not looking for fat girls right now,”

“But I’ve prepared-“

“We don’t have time for this,” Donghee’s file is shoved unceremoniously to the end of the table, “next!”

Donghee leaves and tries her best not to scurry home, though she can feel her dreams falling through her fingers with every step.

In the end Donghee opens her eyes quickly and gets it over with. The numbers flash up red and accusing, exactly the same as this time last week, and the week before, and who knows how ever many weeks before that. Unchanging, no matter what she does, she remains a fat girl fit for nothing but gag concerts.

And though she rages at herself for being unable to drop a single pound despite her unrelenting diet and exercise plan, she cannot help but think of fat boys she knows who have made it through the first, second, final round of auditions because they showed ‘potential’ and she knows the injustice has nothing to do with her.