The Lady’s Fan: Fashion Accessories and Modern Femininity in Republican China

Abstract

Fans as bodily adornments and social signs underwent a noted transformation in the Early Republican period. The folding fan traditionally associated with male literati replaced the rounded fan as a feminine fashion accessory. Carrying a fan—whether the paper folding one or feather variety—conferred on a woman modernity as well as flirtatious allure, partly derived from Western adaptations of the “Oriental” fan as an alluring object for gendered intercourse. The dissemination of fan-holding women through print culture, especially in Shanghai, helped formulate the complex role of the educated Chinese female socialite, who was glamorous and visible in the public sphere, while still defined by her relationships with male kin. Rado eloquently argues for the powerful and complex implications of this seemingly minor accessory. The fan is discussed in its “socio-gender territories” where fashion was integral to the formation of modern society ladies as they became role models for middle- and upper-class women. This feminine type “defined the radical bifurcations between progressive ‘new women’ and decadent ‘modern girls.’”