In case you haven’t heard, China’s basically been conducting an intense clean-up of all sorts of ‘undesirable’ behaviour within the entertainment industry, which includes banning everything from posting selfies on public holidays to “sissy and effeminate” men.

The restriction on the latter already appears to have affected a number of male influencers who were famed for flaunting their femininity, including a Douyin star known as Kang Yaya.

The 18-year-old has amassed over 2.9 million followers on the video-sharing platform thanks to his viral clips of him convincingly cosplaying as female characters such as Snow White.

However, in late September, his account was suspended due to “suspicions of being vulgar”, and Yaya issued an apology on Weibo for his actions.

“Over the course of my video-shooting career, I did not consider the influence I would have on society and young people,” he wrote. “Being a man who dresses up as women has had a negative impact on social morality. I apologise to everyone and hope you will forgive me. Sorry!”

Yaya then announced that he would go on a temporary hiatus and will no longer make videos of him in drag. Since then, he’s made sure to post more pics of himself looking ‘manlier’ instead.

About a month later, Yaya’s Douyin account was finally restored, though all the clips of him in drag had been taken down for good, much to the disappointment of fans.

Recently, Yaya caused a stir among netizens again, this time for a not-so-flattering reason — and it’s all thanks to a filter failing him for a few seconds.

During a live stream, Yaya, who was back to sporting long hair, make-up, and women’s clothing, accidentally disabled the beauty filter long enough to ‘expose’ his real, unretouched appearance.

Dramatic netizens practically had a meltdown, leaving comments like: “This is a scam”, “This feels like the loss of trust between two people”, “When the filter is turned off, you can immediately see that he’s a man”, and “It looks like a completely different person”.

Yaya took the reactions in his stride at first, sharing a few of the filter-free screenshots and calling himself a “level 10 beauty contestant”, but he later took down his post.

Photos: Kang Yaya/Weibo, 吃块红绿水果/Weibo, 追星教父BOBO/Weibo