[This article may contain material offensive to some readers]

This morning, Weibo user @Morning Sunbeams of Southern China made a post that contained all of the pictures seen in this blog.

For context that may explain these photographs, text was added to these photographs. These words said:

Guangzhou female university students suddenly take their clothes off in public. Under the gaze of everyone’s eyes, these women were not shy in the slightest. Male students at Guangzhou University City (Guangzhou Higher Education Mega Center) have gone crazy.

Upon further analysis of the photographs, signs could be seen that read “Stop looking at us through lusty lenses”, “Cherish the worth of the female sex” and “We need equal opportunities for employment”.

Online debate of this protest was fast and but not spurious. A user named Chaozhoufangua(潮州翻瓜) wrote: There are many ways of protests. Why baring yourself? For the attention? Most of the people only talked about the nudity anyway.

On the contrary, Weibo user Maskmagician opined: Our Chinese national characteristics are not fit these “open” protests. It’s disgusting and is purely for the attention. I am not even bothered to repost this story.

Opinions differing as they will, job discrimination is still a factor for today’s women. The job market in China is expected to be much tougher than last year as 8 million graduates will soon be flooding into the country’s various job markets, Sina reported on April 21. Last year, the number was recorded around 7 million and it was already called as the “toughest employment season ever” by some media reports.

It was certainly fortuitous that a crowd of photographers was on hand to record this extremely rare occurrence of women “suddenly” taking their clothes off in a planned media stunt that is sure to gather attention for many things if not for the alarming fact that China’s body painting technology is decades behind that of the West.

The Nanfang will continue to follow this story as more details are uncovered.

Natalie Wang contributed to this report.

Pictures: Weibo account, club isso