The New Social Media Body Challenge We Won’t Be Taking Part In
The ‘A4 waist challenge’ requires participators to compare their waist to a piece of A4 paper [Photo: CEN]
Move over thigh gap, there’s a whole new body challenge currently trending on social media, and this one’s equally as worrying.
The ‘A4 waist challenge’ kicked off in China and involves women uploading photos of themselves comparing their waist measurements to an upright piece of A4 paper.
But the controversial new trend has sparked debate over whether it sets unrealistic ‘fitness’ and ‘health’ goals for women to achieve a waist size the same or narrower than the width of the paper which measures just 21cm.
Despite the criticism, thousands of participators have taken part in the challenge, sharing pictures of themselves holding a piece of blank paper against their waist to social media website, Sina Weibo, often referred to as the Chinese Twitter.
Unrealistic fitness goals. Some experts have slammed the new challenge [Photo: CEN]
While some believe the challenge offers an achievable body target and are sharing their health and fitness tips alongside pictures of Chinese models with ‘A4 paper’ size waists or smaller, some male users of the site have said they would not be taking part in the challenge because it is physically impossible for them to possess a waist narrower than the width of a piece of A4 paper.
It’s not the first time China has started a contentious body challenge. Last year, they kicked off a trend that saw social media users uploading pictures of themselves touching their belly buttons by reaching behind their back and around their waist. But the challenge quickly led to concern about whether it was promoting an unhealthy body image with some experts accusing the challenge of promoting eating disorders and distorting society’s standards of beauty.
The challenge follows the round the waist belly button challenge, that also started in China [Photo: CEN]
“Quirky poses and pictures can be fun but sometimes they also become expressions of competitiveness or insecurity,” explained Jolene Tan, Programmes and Communications Senior Manager at Aware, a non-governmental organisation in Singapore which champions women’s rights, at the time.
She went on to add that the trend seemed to be “one more way of scrutinising women’s bodies to see whether they are ‘good enough’”.
“We need to do more to promote acceptance of diversity in women’s bodies,” she told the BBC at the time.
What do you think of the new body challenge? Let us know @YahooStyleUK
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