A new challenge known as the ‘fish in collarbone challenge’ is going viral among ladies in Asia trying to prove who is skinnier by putting small fish in their collarbones. The trend is here to reinforce the ‘beauty standard’ of the era. We find out what experts feel about this new addition to the long list of such bizzare events.
“There have been such trends since time immemorial. There was a time when Chinese women had to wear metal shoes in order to keep their feet from growing beyond size 3, or English women had to wear tied up corsets. We may call them bizarre or just a human tendency to be different from others. This maybe looked at from two aspects, societal and individual. A society builds up rules in the name of tradition, religion or culture to maintain its uniqueness and also influence followers. Also, it can be explained through perception and these change with time,” says senior psychologist Akshay Kumar.
On the other hand, Nakshatra Pachauri says, “People are obsessed with how they are seen! Being skinny is considered sexy. Our fitness regimes are being defined by popular culture rather than health metrics. And this pop culture association brings us to the questions as to why, to who and for what are we showing off our bodies by undertaking these weird, dangerous and completely unnecessary challenges.”
Most of our time today is spent on social media rather than knowledge gathering. Nakshatra adds, “One reason for this is that the consumers are only interested in consuming their self-imagery. Of course such a narcissist user would do anything to keep themselves relevant. The self obsession relishes and becomes bigger by attracting attention (spectacle creation) and by proving our worth (self-objectification) to others on social media. The bigger the virality, the better we tend to feel about ourselves. The inflated egos induce the users to continue escalating the spectacles and the cycle continues! Being fit is not enough, to be seen as fit is everything! Spectacular cacophony rules the roost!”
