Abstract
ABSTRACT This article explores how shaonügan, a media-driven aesthetic of womanhood, is practiced and promoted in contemporary China through a case study of a well-received woman-themed talent show. This article first conceptualizes shaonügan in postfeminist discourses to unpack how a narrowly-constrained female beauty ideal paradoxically both empowers and disciplines women who embrace normatively feminine pursuits in a neoliberal consumer culture. This article then examines how shaonügan is constructed and perpetuated by the celebrity sisters through their bodily performance of girlish cuteness and relentless pursuit of eternal youth in the show. Ultimately, the postfeminist beauty norm embodied by the celebrity sisters rearticulates a heteropatriarchal definition of female beauty and readdresses women’s subjectivities in neoliberal consumerism that is further complicated and enhanced by media techniques in contemporary Chinese society.
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