Mr. Babe Is Japan’s Magazine ‘By Chubby Men, for Chubby Men’

Norihito Kurashina, a 52-year-old magazine editor who weighed in at just over 180 pounds, was fed up with reading magazines that catered only to skinny men. So he started his own, Mr. Babe, Japan’s first magazine “by chubby men, for chubby men.” The first issue, which was available at newsstands in October, featured a smirking Jack Black on the cover, and sold more than 25,000 copies. The slick lifestyle publication will offer fashion, dating, and exercise tips, among other things, for men of larger sizes.

“I kept asking myself why there were so few fashionable clothes for people like me,” Kurashina told The Guardian. “There are plenty of clothes for slim men, and specialist shops for unusually tall men, but practically nothing for podgy men.”

Kurashina says it’s difficult for bigger men to find clothing, even in Japan, where a third of men are considered “overweight” by BMI standards.

“You could say that Japan is behind the times, but I think it’s more accurate to say that clothes manufacturers here have simply never given bigger men a second thought,” he says. “There is something wrong with the idea that you can only be cool and attractive if you’re thin.”