Just when we thought we’d moved past the #thighgapchallenge, women on Instagram have started measuring the size of their waists against a vertical piece of A4 paper.
The “trend”, which started in China, requires a woman to stand behind a piece of A4 paper, which is 21cm wide, in the hopes of showing off that their waist disappears behind it. Chinese state newspaper People’s Daily described it as a “fitness challenge”.
(Image: Weibo)
Using the #A4waist, millions of images were posted to Weibo, a Chinese social media site, which then went viral on Instagram and saw girls in their teens and early 20s take up the challenge.
Not long after the hashtag and challenge started trending, other hashtags arose: the counter trend #stopA4waist and #immorethanmywaist, which saw users uploading images of themselves holding their university degrees and papers showing messages of discouragement against the trend.
(Image: Instagram/be.arum)
