Illustration: Xia Qing/GT

As summer is just around the corner, I happily put on my cute sundress to show off my sexy, toned calf and arm muscles that I have been working on all winter. I eagerly wait for compliments. Nothing. Nobody said anything.

Finally, one of my colleagues said to me, "Oh my God, your muscles are so big, so scary."

There it is, my long-awaited "compliment." Thank you.

Just because I choose to have a different body type from what most Chinese find aesthetically pleasing, I am scary?

You know what I find scary? Those skinny and weak chopstick legs that many Chinese women dream of having. I am afraid they might break when they run.

Yes, my muscles are above average, but that doesn't mean I am fat. In China, girls often ask each other how much they weigh, but that measurement doesn't take into account how much of your weight is muscle and how much is fat.

People who work out ask each other about body fat percentage. Mine is 18, which puts me in the athlete category. That's to say, even though somebody weighs the same as me, our bodies might look very different.

In many Asian countries, people find big muscles scary. Whenever I try to talk my girlfriends into fitness training, most of them say they want to look fit, but they are scared of getting muscular.

"I don't want to look like a man," they say.

Even though I explain that it is harder for women to build muscle than men, the fear of building too much muscle runs so deep that they don't want to risk it.

Like me, many of my muscular guy friends are not getting positive comments about their body.

One of them keeps getting rejected by girls because they think he might be a violent person. My friend, despite his strong and tough appearance, is in fact like a teddy bear in temperament.

"I believe he is a nice guy and will not hit me, but I am scared of the damage he can do," one of the girls said to me.

Other girls told me that they think most bodybuilders are playboys. "They must want to hook up with many pretty women," they assume.

Another muscular friend of mine always wears a loose T-shirt to cover his body in summer.

I asked him why, and he said he is afraid that people might think he is all brawn and no brains, a Chinese discrimination that looks down on muscular men.

I get it. People have a lot of issues regarding body image.

But we can either sit back and let people judge or stand up and tell the world that we are proud of our body, just like the ongoing body positive movement that encourages women all over the world to love their body just the way it is.

Honestly, when I build muscle I also build self-esteem and self-confidence, and I believe that it's the new sexy.

This article was published on the Global Times Metropolitan section Two Cents page, a space for reader submissions, including opinion, humor and satire. The ideas expressed are those of the author alone, and do not represent the position of the Global Times.