Bridging the Self’s worlds: Young girls’ creative TikTok expressions of multimodal literacy during Covid-19

Abstract

This study investigates three young Chinese girls’ active play on TikTok as a way to engage in global communication during the Covid-19 lockdown in China. In particular, this paper aims to navigate how the girls position themselves in TikTok multimodal literacy play, as well as to inquire into how they practice literacy to deny, negotiate, and/or accept the beauty norms in TikTok virtual space. Situating and exploring these young girls’ stories, the author shares findings from multiple rounds of virtual interviews during the pandemic that highlight the girls’ creativity through multimodal literacy engagement on TikTok; their playful thinking that adopted the pandemic as a way of life and empowered the girls despite uncertainties, doubts, and tensions; and their complex beauty values negotiations embedded in the experiences of the girls’ vibrant interactions on TikTok. Inspired by the girls' literacy practices and gender negotiations, TikTok’s influences on norms of beauty and feminine appearance are discussed. Interrogating the limits of this platform, this work recognizes the possibilities of young girls’ multimodal literacy experiences while encouraging further negotiations, reimaginations, and growth in their celebrations of social media like TikTok.