Latest thin-is-beautiful Internet trend in China sees women tying earphones around their waist

For those of us who’ve experienced being cooped up at home for way longer than normal, y’all know that cabin fever is real. 

It’s the same feeling that many in China are probably going through right now as they continue to be stuck indoors amid a deadly coronavirus outbreak. It’s gotten bad enough that netizens are coming up with unusual ways to entertain themselves at home — like this Internet challenge that sees ladies wrapping earphones around their waist to show off how slim they are. 

There’re no specific rules about the challenge really. But it seems like the earphones everyone will have to use for the challenge is the Apple EarPods with Lightning connector, which measures about 1.4 metres in length. I mean, it’s not much of a challenge if you're tying other earbuds with extra long cords around your waist. 

Judging from the glut of tiny cable-wrapped waists that popped up on Weibo, Chinese netizens are totally cool with how bizarrely unwholesome the challenge is and how it reinforces potentially harmful beauty standards. 

As the Weibo post noted, it’s only the latest in the long line of Internet trends in China that fortify the societal sentiment that being as aggressively slender as possible is beautiful. This is, after all, a nation that has an opposing view to the progressive ideals of “body positivity” in the Western world. 

Viral stunts like the “A4 waist challenge” (where women hold up A4 paper to their torsos to show how tiny their waist is) and the “collarbone challenge” (where women balance as many coins as possible on their clavicles) have been repeatedly criticised by medical experts outside of China. 

“The pressure for women to conform to a thinness ideal pervades all parts of the developed world and China is no exception to the rule,” the Women’s Foundation Research and Advocacy manager Lisa Moore mentioned to South China Morning Post about these trends. 

“Media has played a significant role in transmitting thinness norms and values, which has shown links to increased body image dissatisfaction, eating disorders and lowered self-esteem among women.”

Body positivity on social media made local headlines last week, too, thanks to an online spat over obesity between local influencer Wendy Cheng (better known as Xiaxue) and local actress Oon Shu An.

ilyas@asiaone.com