Eddie Huang Models Underwear to Get You Talking About Male Body Image

Eddie Huang isn’t your typical underwear model. The restaurateur, author of Fresh Off the Boat and Double Cup Love, and host of Viceland’s Huang’s World has what he calls “the three cardinal sins of being an underwear model.”

“I’m Asian, fat, and I’m short,” Huang told GQ. “I’ve never been that comfortable with how I look or my body. When you’re a dude, you’re not really asked to talk about that. You hear women talk about their bodies, their appearances, and how they’re uncomfortable with it. … I definitely had a lot of self-image stuff I dealt with personally, but I don’t think it’d be fair to compare to women’s body issues, since it’s a lot more complex for a number of reasons for them. But I don’t hear a lot of men write or talk about positive body image.”

Despite his own insecurities, Huang decided to partner with MeUndies to design a pair of underwear. “I think it’s pretty cool that I’m doing the underwear with MeUndies, because for me, the whole campaign and the product is about positive body image,” he says. Huang views MeUndies as the “everyman, everywoman underwear,” calling them “quality, comfortable, accessible underwear.”

“For me, there were three things I was negative about: my height, my weight, and how my face looked,” he said. “Down South, kids were very racist; they would always make ‘Ching-Chong Eddie Huang’ jokes, call me chinky eye, all that stuff.”

Huang sees how this created body image problems for him as an adult. “A lot of times, as a man, you don’t feel empowered or enabled, or you’re not given the opportunity to speak about negative body image or how insecure you are about the way you look,” he said. “We’re supposed to just be measured on our abilities and our work. This was a thing I really struggled with.”

Huang credits the Fat Jew with giving him the confidence in his anatomy to be photographed in his underwear. “I was shooting recently with Fat Jew, and we were doing a scene for Huang’s World. This guy comes out, takes his drawers off in front of the camera, and the crew saw his d**k,” he says. “Well, if he’s cool with his, I’m happy with mine. … We were doing the photo shoot, and I had no shirts and pants on, and I don’t really care if my d**k looked funny or that my belly was hanging out. I was having a great time.”

Some view body image talk among men as emasculating, but Huang is using his platform to normalize the discussion. “There’s always going to be new insecurities, or old ones come up,” he noted. “It’s funny. For me, a lot of times, I get insecure in moments when I least expect it — where I’m like, ‘Wait a second, where did this come from? Where did 13-year-old Eddie come out of?’ It could be something someone says in passing, or on Instagram, you never know.”

But for Huang, self-talk is a tool for navigating moments of insecurity. “It’s a constant mental battle to put that down and say, ‘Hey, don’t sit in that moment, don’t go back to being that kid.’ You know who you are, and you know there’s a lot to love about yourself, regardless of what someone is going to say.”

Read more from Yahoo Style + Beauty:

• 10 Times Male Celebrities Got Real About Body Image

• How I Finally Learned to Quit Late-Night Screen Time and Just Go to Bed

• Is Anorexia Hereditary? New Study Presents Strongest Evidence Yet

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