Soon after Min moved to the U.K., she noticed a difference in the way women presented themselves on dating apps. Back in China, she and most other women would edit their photos to look “pretty, exquisite, and perfect,” the postgraduate student told me. But now her dating app profile suddenly looked like the odd one out.

Min then made a liberating decision, and stopped using photo-editing app Meitu. Gone were the exaggerated eyelashes, the slimmed-down face, and the smoothed-over pores. Now, she was going to keep her natural look.

Such a change in self-presentation is common among Chinese women studying in the U.K., I learned in 2022 from interviewing Min and 29 other women between the ages of 19 and 30 — all of whom I’ve given pseudonyms to protect their privacy.

While many reported feeling liberated from the dominant beauty standard in China, my research shows that this “freedom” was soon, if not immediately, followed by a realization that they now had to contend with the pressures and struggles of a different set of beauty standards.

In our conversations, many women recalled how they used to alter their photos to fit China’s baiyoushou ideal — fair-skinned, young, and slim. For centuries, Chinese culture has associated fair skin with delicacy, chastity, and higher social class. A slim figure is often associated with women’s submissiveness and femininity and has, in recent years, become even more desirable due to the popularity of K-pop culture. Youthfulness, meanwhile, is not simply about age but about projecting a childlike aesthetic that conveys innocence and vulnerability.

Feeling insufficiently baiyoushou, Liu, an undergraduate student, told me she never uploaded full-body photos on dating apps back in China. “I believed that I was a fat and ugly girl,” she said, saying that her mother often told her to lose weight, which undermined her self-confidence.

Such comments are common. During our interview, Min scrolled through the dating app messages she had received back in China: “Fat girl, you should lose weight.” “Your arms are as thick as my legs.” She was once called a “tank” — implying she was as big and heavy as a military vehicle. Such experiences discouraged both women from posting full-body or unedited images.

Even participants whose profiles did include body shots often used editing apps to slim their figures and lighten their skin tones. They saw such alterations as a way to increase their chances of getting more likes, matches, and attention.

In fact, the baiyoushou beauty standard not only shaped the way they presented themselves online but seeped into their daily lives. Some women I interviewed went on strict diets, used skin-whitening products, or developed eating disorders in order to conform to the unrealistic beauty ideal.

Moving abroad provided these women an opportunity to escape this mindset. They began uploading a different style of profile photos on dating apps: more natural full-body photos taken in outdoor settings. The change, they explained, came from greater tolerance for body shapes in the U.K. “Many people thought I was too fat in China, but I was not that fat in the U.K.,” one interviewee told me. “I see different body shapes here, and people won’t judge each other.”

Some interviewees even described a sense of “upward mobility” in terms of attractiveness, as their appearance — deemed undesirable in China — was appreciated by Western daters. One interviewee who had frequently been called too fat back home described to me how she had received compliments in the U.K. for being “pretty and sexy.” The growing confidence encouraged her to share more full-body images on dating apps.

These students also began to upload photos showing them engaging in outdoor sports, a hobby they have found popular among Western dating app users. One interviewee who added skiing photos to her profiles in the U.K. told me that “most Western men like women who are outgoing and sporty.” Rather than the skinny look seen as ideal in China, she believed that Western men prefer women who look plump and toned.

These changes, for some women, felt empowering. As 25-year-old Cui told me: “In the U.K., I present photos without makeup, showing my body and muscles without beautification. Showing my real self is a way to say ‘no’ to baiyoushou patriarchal beauty standards. I am who I am, and I don’t want to change my appearance to meet an ideal image created by men.”

However, self-presentation on dating apps in the West is far from a story of full emancipation. Just as Chinese students take a break from the burden of being “fair-skinned, young, and slim,” they also feel the pressure to conform to the Western ideal body image. They now received comments calling them “too skinny,” “not sexy,” or having “no curves.”

Although many participants beautified their photos less in the U.K., some still felt the need to retouch them, just in different ways. Ke, also a student, made efforts to edit her photos to appear curvier. “I retouched my photos to have thick lips and firm and round buttocks because I think the Kardashian body shape is appreciated by most Western men,” she said.

This Kardashian-style ideal, characterized by an hourglass figure, tanned skin, and full lips, came up frequently in my interviews. For some women, failing to meet this standard led to embarrassment and self-doubt. “I think Asian women usually have flat buttocks, which makes our body shape not good-looking,” Ke said.

One interviewee recounted one particularly uncomfortable moment: “Some white men asked me, ‘Do you eat anything every day? Why are you so skinny? What do you eat for your meals?’” She began to use the “body” function in Meitu to enlarge her legs, hips, and chest, yet this feeling of being caught between two unrealistic beauty ideals frustrated her: “I am considered not slim enough by Chinese men, yet my body is skinny and unhealthy according to Western beauty standards.”

For those participants whose natural looks align with the Chinese baiyoushou beauty standard, retouching their photos became crucial in the U.K. Their physical attributes, highly valued on the Chinese dating market, became a liability in the Western context, leading to an experience of “downward mobility” in the dating scene. One interviewee with fair skin and slim figure, for example, said this made her uncompetitive in the U.K. Accordingly, she edited her photos to make herself look curvy and tanned.

Although transnational mobility offered female Chinese students the possibility to resist one beauty ideal, it did not protect them from another, equally demanding set of standards. Liberating to some women, this situation felt like twice the pressure to others, being judged at home for not being baiyoushou enough and judged abroad for not being curvy enough. The male gaze did not disappear across borders; it just changed shape.

Portrait artist: Wang Zhenhao.

(Header image: Shijue/VCG)