Social media has led to you to have unrealistic expectations from your life. This may not sound new to you, but another thing that social media has prompted many people to do is have unrealistic expectations from their body.
This does not come as a surprise to China, where body challenges have been trending: all from an A4 size sheet to a stack of coins.
For the past few months, social networking sites have been coming up with various challenges and hashtag campaigns, most of which are pathetic.
#A4Waist
#TheBellyButtonChallenge
#ThighGap
#IHavei6Legs
#CoinsOnCollarBones
#DimpleHoldPenLid
These body challenges are not just limited to China, the US has them too. However, in China, many companies are taking advantage of these challenges for promotion. The #BellyButtonChallenge soon had people holding a Coke instead of touching the belly button. The other companies replied by starting hashtags of their own. The Chinese version of Yelp said, “It’s our fault you can’t touch your belly button. We’ve suggested too much delicious food.”
The trend of measuring your body parts with objects as a sign of fitness may be applauded by some people, but it is the reality about the sickening standards of beauty in China, where being incredibly thin, even undernourished, is considered as a sign of beauty. Hashtags like #gorgeous and #beautiful trending with these pictures would almost be hilarious, had they not triggered depression and body anxiety in many people, coupled with eating disorders.
Many people have ridiculed these challenges on social media.
But for one person who opposes it, there are hundreds of people gladly taking part.
Unfortunately, these challenges being called ‘body shaming challenges’ by many, have spread to other parts of the world, and these validate how absurd these challenges can be, and how desperate women are for social approval.
We can only hope that it is a matter of time before people realise the repulsiveness of such challenges, and stop setting unrealistic, and even unhealthy standards of beauty.
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