The Troubling ‘Fitness Challenge’ Trending in China Right Now
An unhealthy “fitness” challenge is trending among Chinese women. (Photo: Getty)
The latest in extremely dangerous social media trends is the A4 waist challenge, a “fitness” test for people to judge whether their waists are paper-thin. The topic is trending on the Chinese social media site Weibo, and 110,000 users have posted photos holding pieces of A4 paper, measuring 8.27 inches wide, up to their waists and tagging #IHaveAnA4Waist. If they can hide their waists behind the paper, they consider themselves “fit.” One user bragged, “I’m a size smaller than A4. I’m A5.”
Women are actually comparing their waistlines to pieces of paper. (Photos: Weibo)
Luckily, some sane Weibo users have put the trend under fire. Critics have posted photos holding the paper horizontally, putting it on small pets, or holding up oversize pieces of poster board instead. “So are they insinuating smaller is better?” one Twitter user wrote. “Not cool to offend the girls who don’t measure up in this manner.”
“I have an A4 face,” one Weibo user captioned. (Photo: Weibo)
While the average healthy waist measurement is 32.5 inches for women and 35 inches for men, the trend doesn’t stack up against healthy bodies.
Even some of history’s most coveted bodies don’t make the cut when an A4-size rectangle is put against their bodies to scale. We nominated Gigi Hadid, Kim Kardashian, Marilyn Monroe, and Naomi Campbell to step up to the plate. With their diverse body types ranging from supercurvy to thin and athletic, very petite to statuesque, and with waistlines ranging from 22 to 26.5 inches, only Marilyn Monroe with her tiny 22-inch waist passed the A4 challenge.
Some of history’s most coveted bodies don’t pass the A4 challenge. (Photos: Splash News [Gigi/Kim]; MPTV images; Getty Images)
A piece of A4 printer paper is only about a quarter the size of the ideal healthy waistline for women (it’s a printer paper size commonly used in Europe). We would hope you would never subject yourself to the A4 challenge in the first place.
This isn’t the first body-shaming challenge to stem from Weibo. Recent trending topics on the site have included the bellybutton challenge, in which participants try to touch their bellybuttons from behind their backs; the collarbone challenge, where people hold as many coins as possible in the indent above their collarbones; and the underboob challenge, in which women try to hold a pen in the fold underneath their breasts. Weibo users have even encouraged one another to stare at the sun to lose weight.
The bellybutton challenge is a test of shoulder flexibility, not health or fitness. (Photo: Weibo)
These challenges represent women shaming and competing with one another over dangerous beauty standards (that we should all ignore). “Viral social media trends further promote body shaming and send out negative messages about body image,” Christine Morgan, CEO of the Butterfly Foundation, told Australian Women’s Weekly. “Those who have not achieved the ‘challenge’ may feel like they don’t measure up to the cultural ideals of beauty and body shape and can experience intense body dissatisfaction, which is damaging to their psychological and physical well-being.” Plus, the sick satisfaction of passing the A4 challenge is not something that should be shared publicly with impressionable young Internet users. Do yourself, young girls, and everybody else a favor and put down the paper and the selfie stick.
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