Adolescents caught in a dangerous A4 body trap

There is a weird trend among women in China: posting photographs showing off their thin waists, thinner than the width of an A4 size paper sheet. People, especially the young, could go on extreme diet influenced by such bizarre trends.

When people - particularly adolescents who want to be excessively slim - follow an unsupervised diet, they become vulnerable to health problems. Although teenagers may have many reasons for dieting, dissatisfaction with their bodies and the desire to be thinner are the usual motivating factors. Adolescents, especially girls, are the target of advertisements showing unrealistically thin women, which they wrongly equate with beauty, health and personal success.

Since society places a high value on youth and physical beauty, adolescents try to imitate the images they see in the media. As a result, they often engage in unhealthy, unnecessary and unsupervised attempts to lose weight.