Looking beautiful vs feeling healthy

An internet fad started for fun takes a malignant turn with women pressured to have an 'ideal' body

For a perfect woman's body, there appears to be a new "standard" - iPhone 6 legs and 100-yuan wrists.

Six women working for a company reportedly coined the term iPhone 6 legs. It means placing the 13.8-centimeter-long handset horizontally on a woman's knees, and only if it covers both can she be said to have iPhone 6 legs.

The term 100-yuan wrist refers to wrapping a woman's wrist with a 100-yuan note. If the banknote encircles the wrist, she has a 100-yuan wrist.

The so-called beauty standard has gone viral online. A rough search for #iPhone6legs on Sina Weibo, the Chinese version of Twitter, throws up hundreds of thousands of posts from young girls gleefully displaying their slim legs for their "success" or with despairing looks for their failure to meet the standard.

A series of bizarre standards for a perfect figure have emerged in recent years. Previous crazes include having abdominal muscles "like the edge of a vest", being able to touch your navel by putting a hand around your back, placing coins in the hollows of collarbones, and tucking a pencil beneath your breasts.

A recent trend had thousands of young women posting selfies with a piece of A4 paper held vertically in front of their waists to show how slim they are. Being able to cover your waist with the 21-cm-wide sheet is considered "ideal".

The pursuit of beauty (or a beautiful figure) is not new. Legend has it that Zhao Feiyan, an empress during the Western Han Dynasty (206 BC-AD 24), weighed so little that she could "dance on a man's palm". Her petite figure became the model for maids in the palace, and some even starved to death to look like her.

During the Tang Dynasty (618-907), things were different. Yang Yuhuan, an imperial concubine, was famed for her beauty, yet she had a buxom figure. So, curvaceous women became all the rage.

Today, a slender figure has become some women's obsessive pursuit. The iPhone 6 legs, 100-yuan wrists and A4 waist are all part of the craze, and such women are not interested in doctors' warnings that too thin a waist is harmful to your health.

In fact, such is the beauty fad that every week sees a new "standard", leaving tens of thousands of women delighted or dejected depending on whether they meet or fail the new criterion.

Some of the standards are created just for fun, but when women go online and see rows of iPhone 6 legs day after day, the pressure to fit the bill is bound to mount. Add to this the tongue-in-cheek comments from some celebrities such as "How can you survive this summer without an A4 waist?" and you have an example of cyberviolence.

There is nothing wrong in pursuing a slim figure, but if a woman does so because of a fad, she should know that she is being led by the nose by notional standards of beauty.

For generations, feminists have been fighting for equality and freedom from prejudice. Now, A4 sheets, 100-yuan notes and iPhones 6 legs are threatening to offset their gains and add fresh links to women's shackles.

There is no perfect template for beauty, nor is there any point in blindly following idiosyncratic standards of beauty. Celebrities hitchhike on the online craze to draw more attention to themselves. We have to keep that in mind.

One may feel good, even proud, to look "beautiful" according to the outlandish standards, but real beauty lies in being healthy of body and agile of mind.

The author is an editor with China Daily. Contact him at lifangchao@chinadaily.com.cn

(China Daily Africa Weekly 04/15/2016 page13)