On social media, a challenge goes viral, which is remarkably easy for women to do, while men tend not to succeed in meeting the seemingly simple challenge. Several hilarious films show that the chairchallenge women do indeed have an advantage and that the opposite gender is ingloriously lost. Try it yourself!
The challenge, which has existed for years but has suddenly become popular again, works as follows. Stand the length of two footsteps of a wall, bend over and then lean your head against the wall. Then take a chair (get it ready just in advance) and slide it under you. Lift the chair and then press the piece of furniture against your chest. Then try to stand upright again, including the chair in that position. It seems very simple to go through all the steps in that order, but the devil (coming up) is demonstrably in the tail.
Many people break their heads about the fact that remarkably many women can do the #chairchallenge and men often cannot. The American scientist Jeremy Johnson suspects that it has something to do with the center of the body’s mass. “In women, the center is a bit lower in the hip area and higher in men”, he reacts in a personal internet blog. “When women bend over the chair, the mass center is about above their feet and in men a little more forwards above the chair.”
Feet
Brian Ford, a professor at Cambridge University in the UK, suspects that foot length plays a major role in the challenge. “It is true that the mass or gravity center of women is a few centimeters lower than that of men, but that does not play a role in this challenge,” he told tabloids The Sun and Mirror. “Men have longer feet than women and will, therefore, stand at a greater distance from the wall: on average 60 centimeters. As a result, as a man you fall forward in that position and getting up is difficult. Because women are closer to the wall, they stand up more easily.”
That some men still manage to complete the challenge, according to Ford, has to do with their shoe size. “Men with small feet can probably do it. But undoubtedly not people with huge barges.” The same applies the other way around. Women with big feet probably can’t take the challenge either.
