Girls are posing with A4 paper to show how small their waists are

The A4 paper challenge, a disturbing trend for showing off the size of your waist has taken China's social media network by storm.

Women on Weibo, the country's equivalent of Twitter, are posting photographs of themselves with a piece of A4 paper over their middle, with the idea being that it appears as though they have no waist at all.

The craze, which appears to have started in February, follows on from the belly button challenge (wrap your arms around your body and try to touch your tummy button), and the pen challenge, (hold a pen under your breasts), and has been decried as another example of unrealistic beauty standards.

Thousands of women have posted photos on Weibo tagged with the hashtag #A4waist, aiming to show that their waist is small enough to be concealed by the smallest side of a piece of A4, which measures just 21cm.

A backlash has begun on the platform, and spread to Twitter and Instagram, where photos of the challenge recently started being posted.

"If someone could just grab me a sheet of A0, that'd be great," one Twitter commenter deadpanned, adding: "If you're healthy, size doesn't matter."

One male Weibo user posted a picture of his "A4 face", while another posted a picture of her cat taking part in the challenge.

Source: NY Mag