New femininities and self-making in contemporary Chinese beauty influencing

Abstract

With the rapid development of industrialized social media influencing, China’s beauty economy has spawned legions of beauty influencers. These influencers and their social media production have formed a complex and seemingly contradictory assemblage of beauty ideals in the contemporary Chinese social media landscape. Amidst this assemblage are circulating an array of emergent femininities, a wave of nationalism and a suspiciously neo-liberal-looking subjectivity. Through a qualitative analysis of 383 Weibo posts of the top Chinese beauty influencers, this article reveals that these influencers and their social media productions play a crucial role in producing new conceptualizations of beauty in China (and beyond). Their cultural creations seem to empower women through active beauty interventions and body makeovers, but essentially fall into the trap of neo-liberal capitalism and perpetuate problematic beauty notions in tandem with local patriarchal gender scripts.