Trending 24th June 2015 by Kirstie McDermott

Don’t Bother To Bone Up On The Latest Body Shaming Fad, The Collarbone Challenge…

As yet another body shaming craze sweeps the internet, we're throwing our hands up in the air and saying, "enough, already!"

Here we go again…

We just about got over last week’s eye-rolly ridiculous Belly Button Challenge (let’s refresh your memory, shall we: it was all about women showcasing how slim they are by wrapping an arm around their waist; if they could touch their belly button they… oh, well actually we’re not sure what they achieved, actually) and now here we are again, with the Collarbone Challenge.

Lv Jiarong

Like the Belly Button ‘Challenge’, it’s coming at us from China, where it originated on the one of the country’s biggest social networking sites, Weibo, where it all kicked off by Chinese actress Lv Jiarong, when she uploaded a shot of her balancing more than 80 coins on her collarbone.

#锁骨放硬币 #collarbonechallenge #ככהלומדים

A photo posted by Yahav Givol (@yahavgivol) on

The pic went viral, and possessors of razor sharp collarbones began to copy her and post their pictures too, to prove that they too don’t need purses.

We assume that this is of course the point of this trend – that wealth should be shared equally among all and made accessible and not hidden by the 1% – and not that it’s somehow a good thing to gloat about how skinny you are so you can get likes on social media.

Because that would be crazy, right? Right…

In better news, just like last week’s silly belly bidness, the ‘challenge’ has been hijacked. #BoobsOverBellyButtons was created by lingerie brand Curvy Kate along with UK breast cancer charity CoppaFeel! to promote breast cancer awareness, and take the body shaming sting out of #BellyButtonChallenge.

End the #collarbonechallenge

A photo posted by Aisha (@grrrlpool) on

Similarly, we’re super-heartened to see that the Collarbone Challenge has been soundly mocked on Instagram with users posting pictures of themselves balancing, variously, pounds of Kerrygold butter, their cats, lego, beer, highlighters and Magnum ice creams on theirs, all to point out just how ridiculous it is.


Honestly? It doesn’t matter if you haven’t met your collarbone since you were 10 or you could hang the washing off it: what does matter is being made to feel that a part of your skeleton (fer chrissakes!) is somehow not matching up to some new, fuzzy, and ill-defined ideal.

We’re here to tell you that we think you all have lovely skeletons – and we want to bring an end to this sort of nonsense online. No one’s better than anyone else because they can balance a few 5c coins on the inside of their shoulder.

It’s well past time to #StopTheShame. Are you with us?

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