Young Chinese women have flocked to show off their body hair in a popular social media contest.
The trending competition has gathered at least 190 million views after being posted to China's Twitter-like Weibo platform under the hashtag #GirlsBodyhairCompetition# yesterday.
Organiser wants to encourage women not to worry about their body hair, especially in summer when they wear T-shirts and dresses.
Female web users have competed to flaunt pictures of their hairy arms and legs, sparking at least 270,000 comments under the thread.
The photo competition was initiated by an entertainment blogger who claims to be surprised by the responses from web users.
The organiser, known by his moniker 'Shen Dian Tong Ji Lin', told MailOnline he decided to organise the selfie contest after one of his female followers sent him pictures of her limbs, complaining about her body hair.
'Considering now it's summer in China, many girls need to wear short-sleeved or sleeveless clothing, and many of them have concerns about their body hair, therefore [I] organised this competition,' said the organiser, who has nearly 10 million fans on Weibo.
The top three participant attracting the most clicks with their pictures would be awarded 88 yuan (£10), 66 yuan (£7) and 55 yuan (£6) in cash.
One of the most-viewed entries shows a hairy arm with a daddy longlegs.
The uploader, who claimed to be a woman, wrote: 'Mosquitoes can't bite me. I am a girl. Does anyone have more [body hair] than me?'
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The post has received more than 42,800 comments and 22,500 'likes'.
One commentator said under the pictures: 'My mother has always called me a wild man. After seeing the pictures from sisters (other female posters) in the comment section, I should become so confident.'
Another reader, said to be male, posted a picture of his smooth arm before writing: 'As a boy, I feel I have lost'.
A third reader joked: 'That mosquito is like a bird in a forest.'
Other popular candidates included one who claimed her abundant arm hair would 'tangle' after each shower and another who billed her own arm as a 'kiwi fruit' due to the hair.
One 20-year-old woman, named Yuan Jiayu, shared a picture of her unshaven arm and her roommate's bare arm.
Yuan thought the contest provided women who have a lot of body hair an opportunity to express themselves and 'to let them know "you are not the only one"'.
'I think whether a girl has body hair or not, what skin colour she has, if she is white enough or what clothing she wears, things as such all depend on aesthetics,' Yuan said.
'I don't care too much about shaving or what other people say about me,' she added.
This is not the first time women in China have openly showcased their body hair with pride.
In 2015, hundreds of women took part in a selfie competition to display their armpit hair.
The organiser of the competition, Xiao Yue, said that women did not need to be hairless to feel beautiful.
'Women's armpit hair is considered to be offensive, rude and ungraceful - how come it makes people so uncomfortable?' the 26-year-old told the Shanghaiist, an English blog covering social news from China.
'Women's armpit hair can be adorable, interesting, humorous, sexy, serious, connotative and ever-changing,' she said.
The armpit hair competition was won by a participants who said she was sick of her boyfriend taking her bare armpits for granted.
The winners of the latest body hair competition are yet to be announced.
This article has been adapted from its original source.
