About

Woman Spying On Male Lovers is a reaction image format and classical art meme featuring a Chinese silk painting depicting a woman spying on two male lovers from the Qing dynasty. The painting has been present online since early 2005 but was turned into a reaction image in the 2020s on X / Twitter and Reddit, especially as a reply to fujoshi women seeing LGBTQ+ content online.

Origin

The earliest online mention of the silk painting depicting a woman spying on male lovers from the Qing dynasty was posted by an unknown user on Wikipedia^[1] on February 19th, 2005.

Spread

In mid-September 2024, netizens started to use the Chinese silk painting as a reaction image replying to LGBTQ+ couples or shipping characters, particularly on X.

For example, on September 19th, 2024, X^[2] user @vampiric_shirin used the viral This Diva" catchphrase along with the woman spying on male lovers painting (seen below), which garnered over 381,000 likes and 40,000 reposts in four days.

On September 22nd, 2024, X^[3] user @ouioui_faguette used the Wikipedia screenshot of the Chinese silk painting as an exploitable meme format, replacing the woman spying for a picture of the Sense 8 Netflix series. The post (seen below) received more than 16,000 likes and 1,400 reposts in a day.

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References