中產階級女性公領域身體展演：1950S-1970s

Abstract

This thesis analyzes several discourses concerning the middle-class woman’s body in the period between 1950s and 1970s in Taiwan, especially tourism industry, job descriptions for women service workers, and “yellow faced woman” (huang lian po, polite or derogatory term referring to one’s own wife) discourses. These discourses belonged to the two most powerful social institutions, work and marriage, which were the most salient forces in women’s lives. The primary sources include newspaper articles, women’s magazines, manuals, and published books. I pay special attention to discursive formations and representations of the proper woman’s body, and I argue that these discourses played an important role in regulating middle class women’s body in the public sphere. The discourses were first conditioned by the Cold War culture and further enhanced by Taiwan’s fast industrialization in the 1960s and 1970s, etc. Job advertisements and descriptions set the qualifications for what a woman’s body should be like, if she was to work in the public. In addition, the ways in which the body was depicted revealed some elements of modernity and self-orientalism. The women’s body was situated in the context of Taiwan’s ambiguous position in the post WWII era and the Taiwanese government’s eagerness to prove itself as the legitimate China. The forces of nationalism and international politics shaped the knowledge of how a woman should present her body appropriately in the public. The main message in the Huang Lian Po discourses is a married woman should present herself in a decent way lest her husband be embarrassed. These codes of conduct were not just for keeping the marriage, but also a way for women to maintain their middle class status. The thesis demonstrates the historical transition of how middle class women cared for their body during the second half of the twentieth century. I argue that both gender and body politics are historically contingent; they corresponded to particular historical circumstances. The forces involved in shaping a woman’s body may stem from the nation, consumer culture, making the husband look good, and middle class status.