By Waiyee Yip.
The news is from the BBC.
The image caption is.
Cai Niangniang was attacked online because of her eyes.
Do I not deserve to be Chinese because of my small eyes?
Cai Niangniang wrote in a recent social media post that old pictures of her went viral for all the wrong reasons.
She had been attacked online for being "unpatriotic" and "offensive" for appearing in advertisements for a Chinese snack brand.
Her apparent crime? There are narrow eyes.
The company apologized for making people feel uncomfortable over the ads, and eventually removed them from the internet.
Ms Cai said that she was just doing her job as a model and did not know what she had done to get cyber-bullied.
"My looks were given to me by my parents," she wrote.
Is it possible that I insulted China the day I was born?
The ads were dug up by nationalist Netizens amid a period of heightened sensitivity online in China over advertisements depicting Chinese people.
In November, a top Chinese fashion photographer apologized for her "ignorance" after a picture she shot for Dior sparked a backlash. A Chinese model had narrow eyes.
There have been other incidents of social media outrage over adverts by Mercedes-Benz and Gucci that featured Chinese women with narrow eyes.
There is a growing sense of online nationalism and anti-West sentiment in China, and some have seized upon these advertisements as examples of racism towards Chinese people. Critics say that these companies perpetuate Western stereotypes of Chinese faces by featuring models with narrow eyes.
The image is from Chen Man/Dior.
The image caption is.
Chen Man's picture for Dior was criticized by some Chinese.
Many wondered why the kind of models in the adverts that are usually seen in Chinese advertisements who have fair skin and large round eyes were not featured.
China Daily highlighted how Western criteria of beauty and tastes dominated the aesthetic. It said that depictions of Asian women in adverts as having narrow eyes were included.
The opinion piece said that the West no longer has a say in everything.
The Chinese people don't need to follow their standards for beauty and attractiveness.
Three Squirrels should have known that Chinese consumers are sensitive to how they are portrayed in advertisements.
Many Asians consider depictions of Asian people to be offensive because they invoke the "slanted eyes" stereotype of Asian people that emerged in Western culture in the 19th century.
The image is from the same source.
The image caption is.
The character Fu Manchu perpetuated a racist idea that Asian cultures threatened Western society.
Fu Manchu, the quintessential Asian villain, was pictured with thin and narrow eyes. The character perpetuated a racist idea that Asian cultures threatened Western society.
"There is a long history in the use of slanted eyes to discriminate against Asians," said Dr. Liu Wen from Taiwan's Academia Sinica.
The push for greater representation of Asian faces in the media and the insistence among some Chinese on one particular beauty ideal stand in stark contrast to the current global debate over diversity.
Observers say that it's understandable that some consumers would be offended by the adverts, but the outcry is too simplistic and ignores the idea that there can be many different ways to look Chinese.
Dr Luwei Rose Luqiu from Hong Kong Baptist University said that rejecting slanted eyes is a very dangerous phenomenon.
It's not beauty that meets a certain standard.
The experts pointed out that the traditional standards of beauty in China favored narrow eyes. Women with long, narrow eyes were prominently featured in paintings from the Tang Dynasty period from , which is considered to be China's golden age for art and culture.
"Despite some variations across different dynasties, more narrow eyes were preferred in ancient China," said Dr. Jung, a consumer behavior expert at the University of Delaware.
The preference for large round eyes may be a recent phenomenon influenced by the West. The latest shift in beauty standards is thought to have started in the late 1970s, thanks to exposure to foreign advertising and entertainment when China opened its doors to the world.
Dr Jung said that women in contemporary China seem to endorse Western standards for female beauty.
Large round eyes are so prized in China that young women are willing to wear makeup or even have surgery to make their eyes look bigger.
Ms Cai, the model at the center of the latest controversy, hopes that people can be kind to those who look different. She said in her post that she didn't need to be attacked even if they didn't like her look.
"My eyes are just like this, in fact they're even smaller in real life than in the ads." Everyone has their own charm.
Sylvia Chang is a reporter for the British Broadcasting Corp.
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Social media.
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The beauty standards.
