BackAs China bans women modeling lingerie, men pull it off with panache
Livestreams featuring females modeling lingerie have had a history of being promptly shut down and banned
PremiumLivestream shopping has become a popular industry in China, expected to reach a value of $700 billion by the end of 2023. However, due to China's laws against spreading obscene material online, livestreams featuring female models wearing lingerie have a history of being banned. To work around this, some businesses have started hiring male models to model women's lingerie.
While some Chinese netizens have found this attempt at circumventing the ban amusing, others have voiced concerns that it is depriving women of job opportunities.
A comment on a video clip of the livestream on Douyin — China's TikTok said, "The guy wears it better than the girl."
"If it's a female model, the livestream would be banned every other minute, it's not like this hasn't happened before, this is still depriving a group of women of their job opportunities," a comment with 130,000 likes read.
However, male broadcasters modeling traditionally female products are not a new concept in the industry, as reported by Insider. One of China's most popular lipstick models, Austin Li Jiaqi, is male and has been dubbed the "Lipstick King." According to the owner of a livestream business named "Mr. Xu," told Jiupai News in an interview, "Personally, we don't really have a choice. The designs can't be modeled by our female colleagues, so we will use our male colleagues to model it."
Despite the popularity of livestream shopping in China, the same trend has not replicated its success in the US. According to Alessandro Bogliari, CEO of Miami-based agency The Influencer Marketing Factory, people in China are drawn to live-stream shopping events because of great discounts, while in the US, there are not enough good hosts and platforms do not provide a strong push to live shopping events on their sites.
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