In a bizarre trend sweeping Chinese social media, young women pose with fake silicone belies to make sure they look their best in their pregnancy photos even though they aren’t yet pregnant.
There was once a time when being single and pregnant was considered a stigma in Chinese society, but today, young women go as far as to fake their pregnancy even if they’re not even in a relationship just to make sure they capture the special moment at their very best. In a craze that has been sweeping the nation, Chinese women in their early 20s pay for fake pregnancy photos to ensure they have beautiful maternity memories later in life when they may not have perfect figures and wrinkle-free faces. The so-called “premade maternity photos” started attraction online after a popular influencer shared her own fake pregnancy photo session online, but the trend has apparently been around for a while.
Back in October, Meizi Gege, a Generation Z influencer from China’s Hunan province, shared a pregnancy photoshoot with her 5.7 million followers on a popular social network, revealing that she did it while she was ‘still slim’. The photos showcased her slender figure and youthful glow, but some of her followers commented that they had opted for the same style of photos years before.
One 26-year-old woman said that she had already taken her maternity photos at 23, when she was still single, while another claimed that she had taken her premade maternity photos when she was 22, just in case she got wrinkles by age 30.
Interestingly, silicone pregnancy bellies first became hot sellers in China over a decade ago, when people started buying them as a joke or just to see what they looked like pregnant, but the products have evolved significantly in recent years and they now come in different sizes, colors and textures, allowing young women to fake various stages of pregnancy.
The popularity of premade maternity photos has sparked concerns in China, as some consider that the trend promotes unrealistic expectations like women having to maintain a youthful, slim figure during pregnancy.
