lifestyle

Women are measuring their waists against A4 paper.

Remember the thigh-gap test? Or perhaps the bikini bridge? Or the one where you basically turn your collarbone into a coin dish?

Well, now there’s yet another absurd test to help you determine whether you’re supposedly ‘thin enough’ [insert eye roll here].

The yardstick this time around? A piece of A4 paper.

Hundreds of thousands of Chinese women are taking to social media to proudly proclaim that their waists are narrower than a standard piece of printer paper.

For the record, that’s just 21 centimetres across.

via Weibo/Astro12-girls

The bizarre ‘beauty’ benchmark has Weibo users in a frenzy, with one named xiao11211614 even writing: “I’m a size smaller than A4. I’m A3.” (Which is actually larger, A5 is smaller.)

The A4 paper test follows another bizarre Internet fad that saw women attempt to secure pens under their breasts to prove their womanliness. Or something.

And, as with all the other ludicrous skinny tests that have gone before it, critics have slammed the A4 paper challenger as wildly irresponsible, totally rubbish and even dangerous.

We’d tend to agree. Now put down that piece of paper!

Watch Jodie Anasta discuss body image in a much more positive way.