What does the 'belly button challenge' tell us about Chinese beauty standards?

It seems like hardly a week goes past without some extreme new viral beauty competition coming from Chinese social media. You know the ones. This week, it’s wrapping your arm far enough behind your head to touch your mouth in order to show you don’t 'have a big face'.

But the week before that, it was the iPhone 6 knees phenomenon, in which women showed that their knees, when pushed together, were no wider than an iPhone 6.

Before that, it was the A4 waist challenge, which - you've guessed it - saw women showing that their waists were no wider than the narrow edge of a sheet of A4 paper. Then there's the banknote wrist challenge, demonstrating slim wrists...

The last couple of years have thrown up a selection of curious Chinese social media challenges. Whether it was women competing to see who had the sharpest collarbones and could balance the most coins in their clavicles, or last summer’s craze for showing that they were thin enough to wind their arm behind their back to touch their belly button, there have been a whole parade of different ways to show how little fat you carry on your body. Hundreds of millions of women are taking part, whether it’s by participating on social media sites such as Weibo, or just viewing the hashtags on social media.

Not that it’s gone unquestioned. In March, thigh gap jewellery from Singaporean designer Soo Kyung Bae was doing the rounds,, external which was created to criticise extreme beauty standards in East Asian culture.

Ing Hwa Chua-Lee grew up in London and Singapore. Her name literally translates as 'Anglo-Chinese', and having experienced both cultures, Chua-Lee believes that East Asian women are under much more pressure to be 'perfect', which includes being slim.

“I think that generally, Asians have very high standards. Not just about beauty, but about achievement, success, work, everything,” she says. “Asian women are naturally quite slim, and you have to live up to that image of being slim and attractive as well as everything else - clever, hardworking, well behaved.

“As an Asian woman in England, I don’t think I’m under any more pressure than my white friends to be thin. But when I was in Singapore, I did feel that pressure much more and noticed it with the women around me.”

East Asian values of beauty are directly reflected by the viral competitions, Chua-Lee, 28, says, but it’s not fair to say that only Chinese people have restrictive standards of beauty. “I see that pageant as society’s standards - forcing women to think it’s desirable to be as thin as a piece of paper. In China, you wouldn’t have a wet t-shirt competition like in the west, but you have the paper competition.” Look at the 'thigh brow' started by the Kardashians, external and perpetuated by Western media for proof that it’s not just women on Weibo creating strangely-specific physical benchmarks.

However, Chua-Lee has high standards for her own appearance. “I appreciate that diversity is seen as important nowadays with feminism etcetera, which I think is fine. But I personally would not be happy if I was bigger than a size six. I don’t know if that comes from Asian standards, or because I have that body type naturally, or if it comes from the Western magazines I read as a child. I don’t expect my friends to be like that, though. My mum, who is Asian and was brought up there, would not be happy if she was above a size 8, and if me or my sister put on weight she would not be very happy either.”

Citing the phenomenon of the 'leftover women' - women who are seen as a failure for not being married by their late 20s - Chua-Lee says: “One sign of success is marriage to a man of a high stature and one way to achieve this is by looking good.” Looking good in this case means being thin.

Eva Didier, Associate Director of global brand and research agency Flamingo, agrees that Chinese women are often under huge pressure to conform in many different aspects of their lives.

She says, “ The latest SK-II advert, external about the ‘leftover women’ shows the huge, huge pressure on Chinese women to get married and indirectly tells you something about the risks of failing to be beautiful enough.”

This is where the social media challenges are problematic, in that they don’t allow for any deviation from a specific standard, and only apply to women.

“This is what tends to happen in a society where there is a constant oscillation between conforming to norms and fierce competition, which is even in the education system,” says Didier. “How do you get ahead and make sure you’re being seen, talked about, and shared? This type of challenge is a simple way of doing that.”

There’s also a lot of stuff getting lost in translation, Didier says. “There’s a problem with understanding what this trend is saying of the people or the culture, and it ends up being seen as ‘another example of the Chinese being weird’.

“But I think sometimes that conversation is disguising some of the level of similarities that also exist, especially if you look at values between some of the Chinese Millennials and Millennials in the west. Some of their values when it comes to beauty are not so dissimilar!”

Cosmetic surgeon Miss Jonquille Chantrey works with a lot of East Asian women and argues that the idea of vanity isn’t seen as shameful in Chinese culture as it is in Britain. “British caucasian women are generally more frightened of making radical changes in the name of beauty as they may be considered vain,” she says. “Chinese women may have more pressure on them as they are expected to look beautiful.”

As a result, her Chinese clients are often prepared to undergo more extreme surgery to get results. “Chinese patients are keen to invest in their appearance and are often well researched."

"I have noticed that cultural ideals are still maintained in many British-born Chinese ladies. Chinese women are more likely to see transformation as an aspiration. These sorts of aspirations require 'endeavour'.”

Miss Chantrey adds: “Chinese society values dedication, which is why body challenges quickly become popular."