Why are models with narrow eyes facing ‘social media backlash’ in China?

Why did recent advertisements featuring Chinese models with narrow eyes draw a backlash from netizens in the country?

Chinese model Cai Niangniang is being subjected to attacks online for being "deliberately offensive" and "unpatriotic", over a series of advertisements made in 2019 for Chinese snack brand Three Squirrels, BBC reports.

Some social media users were so outraged that the company eventually removed the ads online, and apologised for making people "feel uncomfortable" over them, BBC added.

But Cai said that she did not know what she had done to get cyberbullied, noting that she was "just doing my job" as a model who was born with narrow eyes.

"My looks were given to me by my parents. Have I insulted China the day I was born just because of how I look?" -- the 28-year-old wrote on the Chinese social media platform Weibo.

In November, a top Chinese fashion photographer apologised for her "ignorance" after a picture she shot for French luxury brand Dior sparked a backlash. It had featured a Chinese model with narrow eyes.

In recent days, there have been other incidents of social media outrage over adverts by Mercedes-Benz and Gucci that featured Chinese women with narrow eyes.

Amid a growing sense of online nationalism and anti-west sentiment in China, critics say that by featuring models with narrow eyes, these companies are perpetuating western stereotypes of Chinese faces.

Many asked why these adverts did not feature the kind of models more commonly seen in Chinese advertisements nowadays who have "fair skin and large round eyes" -- considered ideal beauty features in China.

A recent editorial by national news outlet China Daily also denounced the ads featuring Cai Niangniang which surfaced recently.

As a Chinese brand, Three Squirrels "should have known about the sensitivity of Chinese consumers to how they are portrayed in advertisements," read the editorial.

On the other hand, scholars say that while it is understandable that some consumers would be offended over the adverts, the outcry is also too simplistic as it rejects the idea that there can be in fact many different ways to look Chinese.

"Rejecting 'slanted eyes' is a very dangerous phenomenon, because it is the rejection of aesthetic pluralism," BBC quoted Dr Luwei Rose Luqiu, from Hong Kong Baptist University.

The current preference for large round eyes, ironically, may be a recent phenomenon influenced by the west. Some experts believe the latest shift in beauty standards began around the late 1970s, thanks to exposure to foreign advertising and entertainment when China opened its doors to the world.

"Women in contemporary China seem to endorse much of the western standards for female beauty ideals pervasive in media images," said Dr Jaehee Jung, a consumer behaviour expert at the University of Delaware.

These days, large round eyes are so prized that it is not uncommon for young Chinese women to wear makeup or even undergo cosmetic surgery procedures to make their eyes appear bigger, such as creating a "double eyelid" crease.