Illustrations: Peter C. Espina/GT

Chinese girls are known to take a liking to a reed-thin figure. Most would want to lose weight even if what's left on their frames are a few pounds of flab they can't do without. They might think they don't look skinny enough to merit a gaze, but to the foreigner the Chinese are way too thin. Earlier this month, a Japanese netizen recently sent a photo of a woman to designers from 18 different countries, asking them to modify the figure into a body shape considered ideal in their country. The Chinese designer, not surprisingly, turned the woman into a super-skinny girl. Many Chinese girls obsess with a size-0 frame and try to see if their waist is narrow enough to be obscured by an A4 paper held along its width. Beauty can't be solely defined by body shape. Like nature has lent myriad shapes to a woman, beauty can be defined in many ways. In modern times, different kinds of beauty, rather than all the popular and beautiful people on social media who look the same, should be appreciated.