XU JING, CHEN DAN and Lisa Torres appear on giant banners, wearing nothing but pink ribbon. Standing 10-metres tall, they flank the entrance to the Shangmei Gynaecological Hospital in Changsha, Hunan province, like protective deities in a temple. Their message to women: Love yourselves, take care of your health.
The trio, all presenters for the Hunan Television group, were the public faces for a cancer prevention programme organised by the women's group Beauty Alliance. But one month after its launch, the banners are all that's left of the public awareness campaign.
In early June, the three young women stopped traffic in the provincial capital when they appeared on posters, nude from the waist up, clad in only a strip of pink cloth, their breasts strategically covered by hands and hair. Sponsored by Shangmei, the campaign called on local women to conduct regular breast checks and take responsibility for their health. The poster appeared on 250 bus stops across the city, emblazoned with the Chinese characters 'Smart Women Love Themselves More'.
Then Changsha, a city known for producing some of the most audacious entertainment on the mainland, choked on its own daring. Local newspapers first played up the trio's nudity, then condemned it. Diatribes filled internet chat rooms and bulletin boards. Speculation ran high over the morals and motives of the three women, but nobody mentioned breast cancer. As controversy raged, the station took the women off the air. By the end of last month, the posters had almost vanished from bus stops and the row has subsided. The call for women's health is reduced to an echo.
Beauty Alliance founder Wang Xiaohua doesn't regret the high-profile campaign. 'We just wanted to express ourselves,' says the 23-year-old advertising agency director.
Better known by her nickname 'Yaya', Wang says she and her friends initially formed the group just to have fun, but it soon became a platform for promoting women's health.