After Ice bucket, it is ‘Belly Button’ challenge now

‘Can you touch your belly button by reaching behind your back and around your waist?’. This is now the trending question in Social Media.

The trend is now currently dominating in the Weibo. The topic is now mostly famous among the female netigens.

Their current trending topic is “reaching your belly button from behind to show your good figure” .

The topic was mentioned more than 130 million times among Weibo readers in the past one day alone. It also spawned 104,000 active discussion threads.

On the other hand, the discussion is getting some criticism too for promoting an unhealthy body image.

Here are some Comments from Weibo:

“Look! Success. More than four hours and I’ve finally reached my belly button,” said Weibo user GayleRabbit.

 “Whoa. Why does my belly button suddenly look and feel brand new?” said another user.

While the trend was dominated by many female users on Weibo, a photo uploaded by a male blogger took the micro-blogging community by storm. He attempt to touch his belly button attracted 2,634 likes and was shared more than 8,452 times along with more than 2,000 comments from other users on Weibo.

“Is this trend really that difficult? I don’t think so,” said Weibo user Sough Sa.

“You go Buddha! Show the skinny girls how it’s done,” said complimented user.

“Now you did it! So don’t lose weight and please stay the same,” Tang Zhao suggested.

“I always root for the underdog. Now I don’t feel so inadequate about not being able to touch my belly button,” said another user.

“Does one need to have flexible arms? Or a skinny waist to pull this off?” asked Weibo user Chantilly623.

But some experts argued that China’s new belly button trend bordered on promoting eating disorders and “distorting” society’s standards of beauty.

“Quirky poses and pictures can be fun but sometimes they also become expressions of competitiveness or insecurity,” said Jolene Tan, Programs and Communications Senior Manager at Aware, a non-governmental organization in Singapore championing women’s rights.