Illustrations: Lu Ting/GT

When a new selfie campaign called the "A4 Waist Challenge" went viral on Chinese social media recently, I didn't even care to roll my eyes. It is the latest online body image fetish fad, but this time the goal is to be able to hide your waist behind a vertical piece of A4 paper (21 centimeters wide).

The campaign was quickly met with worldwide derision. On popular selfie-sharing site Instagram, (mostly Western) women and men posted pictures holding large pieces of paper or objects such as a book or university diploma bearing hashtags of encouragement such as #stopa4waist.

However, among Chinese netizens, many accused "fat" Western women of just being jealous that they do not also have an A4 waist. When one Western Instagram user wrote "Your body is sacred," the Chinese response was "No, an A4 waist is sacred."

Body shaming more or less happens everywhere in the world, yet the kind of body image campaign we have in China is still a rare sight. I cannot help notice that all the Instagram pictures transferred to Chinese social media featured women, whilst there were actually men joining in the hashtag debate too. I could well imagine that, if it were men, they would be getting a quite a different response.

After all, many Chinese women have been converting to another standard of beauty, such as tanned skin and muscled legs (something most Chinese men frown upon) because they are assured it is what Western men prefer.

I personally knew quite a few Chinese girls who once suffered low-esteem because they found their skin tone too dark or their body too athletic. I tried my best to convince them that they look fine, that their look is wholesome and that beauty is not so narrowly defined. But none heard me.

In recent years, however, these same women started posting selfies from their sunbathing trips (something they used to avoid) and close-ups of their muscles. Why? Because they found out during their studies or vacations abroad that "guys actually like that!" Today, they look every bit like the so-called confident, empowered women. But in actuality, all they did was simply jump from one man's ideal to another man's ideal.

The Instagram posts, however, do not suggest that any size is superior or more desirable than another. The core message is that there should not be ANY standard of beauty - not a "Western" standard and not an "Eastern" standard. But for those indignant Chinese women, this is clearly too advanced an idea. They fail to see that the Instagram posters are just trying to be their comrades.

Instead, they view Western women as competitors in some make-believe universal beauty contest taking place in their small minds. It might be the 21st Century, but it is still about lending an ear to men who see things differently while attacking women who see things differently.

In some ways, I understand why Chinese women do not feel that they are entrapped in a body shaming culture, though that is what the protesting voices worldwide have been telling them.

Because at the moment some of them regard themselves as winners coming out of body shaming - they are young, thin, desirable - and proud of it! But it is unrealistic for them to expect that they will stay so forever. Weight gain is a natural part of life, as is aging. Long ago, when I was just 15 years old, one of my junior high girlfriends used a very rude word, laopozi, to describe women above the age 25. Now that we are both turning 27 I wonder how she addresses herself.

There will come a day when the "winners" of the A4 Waist Challenge can no longer fulfill any body image campaigns, but by then it will be too late for them to realize that, in fact, they have been victims all along. It will be too late for them to open their mouths and argue "No, you don't need an A4 paper to prove you are beautiful," as one Instagram user wrote. For there will be a new generation of girls who refute matter-of-factly, "you are just jealous of what you don't have."

The opinions expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Global Times.