Ancillary 10: “Thin is Beauty” in China
For centuries, China has maintained a strict female beauty standard — pale skin, big round eyes, a tall thin nose, and of course an extremely skinny figure. A perfect skinny figure would mainly consist of long thin legs and a tiny, and preferably weighing less than 50 kilograms (in fact, there’s even a saying that “good girls don’t exceed 50 kgs”). Undoubtedly, thin has long been a beauty standard worldwide, especially in the West and Asia. However, it seems like China takes this thin ideal to a greater level — an obsession. Youth Chinese women are growing more obsessed with their body image to the point that multiple challenges have arisen over the years, such as the #A4Waist challenge, in which young women compare the width of their waist to the width of an A4 paper, which is barely 21 centimeters. More recently, another challenge has surfaced — one that forces women to fit into children’s clothing. On popular Chinese platforms such as Xiaohongshu and Weibo, countless young women have posted selfies in popular Japanese clothing brand Uniqlo’s fitting rooms trying on children’s clothes. Of course, this trend not only ruins the clothing but also fosters the Chinese obsession with remaining thin (Yip).
However, with more countries leaving more room for body positivity, such as America, which in recent years has begun accepting and liking more voluptuous bodies, China is also attempting to make small changes. For instance, Chinese lingerie brand NEIWAI released a social media campaign, No Body is Nobody, which featured six women with “undesirable” bodies. Its marketing approach was successful and received positive comments from the Chinese audience. Similarly, there has been a demand for female clothing sizing diversification on Gen-Z focused social media platforms, in which younger audiences are campaigning for plus-size clothing (Zhuang). Notwithstanding these efforts, China remains reluctant toward acclimating to body positivity. Despite brands and social media attempting to change the Chinese thin ideal, the media and most well-known clothing brands continue to perpetuate the thin ideal. When clothing businesses, social media, and society as a whole continue to promote the idea that women’s bodies should fit into a single clothing size, it appears practically difficult for China to progress toward greater body diversity.
As noted, it seems as though the greater issue here is clothing brands and the media continually perpetuating this skinny ideal. Despite the younger audiences’ attempts to rebrand the Chinese mindset of the “ideal body,” China will not adopt a more body-positive mindset unless more popular and well-known brands begin endorsing changes. For example, Brandy Melville, an Italian fast-fashion brand that is known in China as BM, has gained great popularity among young women. However, its one-size principle has “sparked concern that they are fuelling pressure for women to be unnaturally thin” (Yip). Of course, when the most popular clothing brands are the ones that support China’s thin obsession, advancing towards body positivity seems almost impossible. Therefore, a small step that could be taken in order to promote body positivity is for popular clothing brands to adopt a multiple-size policy. Rather than forcing girls to fit into one size, sizes will be offered to fit multiple female bodies.
