For how Chinese women (the ones who play Star Rail anyway) react to various characters, I tend to look at Douban:
https://www.douban.com/group/735784/ Douban is an entertainment media site whose userbase is primarily (but not exclusively) women, and the discussion groups mainly consists of fans discussing the title, so I think it is more reliable than looking at Weibo (Chinese equivalent to Twitter) or NGA (dominated by men).
This is the topic on Jade's reveal:
https://www.douban.com/group/topic/304984208
And this is the topic on Ruan Mei's reveal:
https://www.douban.com/group/topic/297065761
The reactions are... quite different. Almost all the posts about Ruan Mei criticize her costume for being disgusting sexy underwear. Particular attention is paid to the sheer black silk on her belly. By contrast, most of the posts about Jade praise her for being a beautiful older sister in a pretty dress. Some of the posts criticize the black lace bra, but they are usually embedded in in a post that overall likes the dress despite the flaws. It is not because they are different sets of users either. The top voted post said "翡翠姐好看捏，mhy明明能正常做衣服" ("Jade is so nice looking. Mihoyo can design normal looking dress after all")
There are multiple reasons for these sentiments. One is that most of the Chinese fanbase is looking at the artwork on phones, so some details are harder to notice. For example, one user confessed to not realizing
Fischl had a line of sheer black silk running down her belly several years into playing Genshin.
But one big reason (and not a great one) is that Ruan Mei is wearing a Xianzhou dress, while Jade is not. The Xianzhou dresses--as well as the characters who wear them--have various details taken from traditional Chinese culture that makes them quite obvious to Chinese users. The most commonly shared element seems to be the button connecting two sides of the torso. In
Ruan Mei's artwork, it is that horizontal gold colored thing above her belly. But there are various other elements, mostly in the details and patterns on their dresses, like the spirals that represent clouds and waves on a lot of sleeves and trims. There are a lot of supporting elements that signal "this is a Xianzhou character". In Ruan Mei's case, there are the bamboo curtails, the cups, and (of course) the ruan. Jade does not have any of those elements. Jade is being judged as a confident exotic foreign beauty, while Ruan Mei is being judged as a woman wearing a traditional dress that has been sexualized for NEET incels.
It is certainly a double standard, and one that ought not be applied. But I wish people would stop referring to the clothes on Black Swan, Jade, etc as Xianzhou dresses just because they are all highly sexualized.
