Yang Mi’s pose: Art? Or is it body-shaming?

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March 24, 2021

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Yang Mi’s pose: Art? Or is it body-shaming?

By Wang Qingchu | 00:09 UTC+8 March 24, 2021 |

Print Edition

Chinese actress Yang Mi’s participation in an online challenge requiring people to strike a highly difficult pose caused widespread controversy over whether it stoked body shaming.

Yang, who has more than 110 million followers on Weibo, posted a picture on March 21 of her upper body crawling on the ground while her legs rested on a chair — stretching her extremely tiny waist — along with a comic of a woman making the same pose.

Yang wrote: “I accepted the ‘comic waist’ challenge, which is a bit difficult.” The next day, Yang deleted the picture, saying she was curious and took the challenge but learned that without the guidance of a professional trainer the position can be dangerous. She apologized for the misunderstanding.

The topic quickly stirred controversy on Weibo with the hashtag “whether pose challenge increases body anxiety” at one time rising to second place on the trending list with more than 92 million views.

Some netizens think body challenges like these that only very thin women can pull off exacerbate anxiety over the shapes of women bodies, while others think it’s people’s right to show off their bodies however they please.

“The most important issue is that Yang wasn’t showing off her body,” a netizen named Quanshaoye said. “She was striking a pose that most people can’t achieve, so it set a very bad example, irrespective of the health risks.”

“I am so sick of the pathological aesthetic of women’s bodies, such as an A4 waist size and the belly button challenge,” another netizen said.

The A4 waist was an online fad where people posted photographs of their waists behind a vertical piece of A4 paper to show they are paper-thin. The belly button challenge required people to wrap an arm around their waists to see if they could touch their belly buttons.

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Yang Mi’s pose: Art? Or is it body-shaming?

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