Beauty Unlimited

19. Beauty and the State: Female Bodies as State Apparatus and Recent Beauty Discourses in China

368 19. Beauty and the State: Female Bodies as State Apparatus and Recent Beauty Discourses in China eva kit wah man The global economy has an impact on female beauty today, regardless of the multicultural and historical factors in its formation and construction , resulting in monolithic crazes in women’s fashion and appearance. But female beauty in China has been greatly contested within China’s turbulent modern history, and this contestation deserves serious consideration, together with the policies by which the Chinese state apparatus has promoted and regulated female beauty. I argue that certain factors have been constant in contemporary discourses of female beauty. Ideal bodies, in all their specifics, are defined by physical standards very few women can attain. These standards are accompanied by demeaning characterizations of women who fail to achieve them, and who are therefore destined to be discontent. It is now necessary for feminist theorists to examine the social and cultural roles of the body in terms of gender, power, the established patriarchy, and its oppression of women.1 This oppression has been complex and multifaceted in China as well as in the West. In recent Chinese history, beauty standards were tied up with the political necessities of the state, injecting another patriarchal feature into the discourse. Western beauty ideals and practices are associated with sexism and hostility toward women. In modern China, however, beauty ideals and practices have been more fluid, heterogeneous, and practical, working for the country’s benefit. A review of them will contribute to a deeper understanding of China’s reception and adaptation of Western standards.2 Socially pervasive ideals of femininity are in dialectical relations with women’s lived experiences. It is important to review the interaction between 369 Beauty and the State images of beauty and the actual living conditions of Chinese women in the country’s recent discourses. We must also consider the implications of self-enhancement and self-fulfillment, and women’s emotional and mental states. Ideals of women’s bodies are circulated through fervently political and nationalist media and propaganda. Contemporary portraits of female beauty are consistent in their depictions of ideal physical features, irrespective of race and class, and those in contemporary China focus on young women and link images of them to images of the future of the state. Theories of social cognition emphasize the effects of the prevalence of such images and of the incentives offered by the media and social propaganda, consistent with the way ideal female bodies were promoted by the national government as an important part of building the nation at the turn of the twentieth century. The impact of this dialectical development over time on Chinese ideals of female beauty is visible in the country today. Historians have divided the discourses of female beauty in twentiethcentury China into three phases.3 These are the “enlightening period,” from 1919 to 1949; the “degradation period,” from 1949 to 1978; and the “awakening period,” from 1978 to 2000. All had built-in political burdens and social implications. These discourses, created by male Chinese intellectuals, shaped and constructed the bodies and minds of the so-called “new women” (xin nuxian), and women themselves developed through related cultural, political, and economic discourses. National Discourses of Feminine Beauty in Recent China: The Movement of Jianmei During the “enlightening period,” immediately after the May Fourth Movement in 1919, women’s liberation became a part of the new cultural movement. Western science and democracy, imported into China, brought new ways of thinking that promoted gender equality in order to build up images of new women, images that implied a revolt against tradition and a pursuit of freedom. These images of new women contributed to the new images of feminine beauty. In contrast to the traditional fashion, new women wore less jewelry and their clothes were more tightly cut, emphasizing feminine body curves. Women sometimes wore men’s suits, and girls’ school uniforms usually consisted of white socks and shirts and black skirts and shoes; such outfits presented a carefree and reformative style which matched well with the revolutionary cultural slogans of the May Fourth Movement. The qibao, the long, one-piece dress of Manchu origin that was popular among 370 EVA KIT WAH MAN Chinese women at the time, was shortened or “moderated.” (Long, elaborate , sexy qibao were still popular in celebrity circles in Shanghai.) This new look, together with short hair and the release of...