Tilburg University Capitalization of Feminine Beauty on Chinese Social Media Kunming, Li Publication date: 2018 Document Version Publisher's PDF, also known as Version of record Link to publication in Tilburg University Research Portal Citation for published version (APA): Kunming, L. (2018). Capitalization of Feminine Beauty on Chinese Social Media. [s.n.]. 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Download date: 25. sep. 2021 Capitalization of Feminine Beauty on Chinese Social Media Capitalization of Feminine Beauty on Chinese Social Media PROEFSCHRIFT ter verkrijging van de graad van doctor aan Tilburg University op gezag van de rector magnificus, prof. dr. E.H.L. Aarts, in het openbaar te verdedigen ten overstaan van een door het college voor promoties aangewezen commissie in de aula van de Universiteit op woensdag 7 maart 2018 om 16.00 uur door Kunming Li geboren te Luoyang, Henan, People’s Republic of China Promotores: Prof. dr. J.M.E. Blommaert Prof. dr. J.W.M. Kroon Copromotor: Dr. M. Spotti Overige leden van de promotiecommissie: Prof. dr. C.W. Chun Prof. dr. S.H. Leppänen Dr. J. Dong Dr. C. Spadavecchia Dr. P.K. Varis ISBN 978-94-6299-896-4 Cover photo and design by Kunming Li and Ru Zhang Layout / editing by Karin Berkhout, Department of Culture Studies, Tilburg University Printed by Ridderprint BV, the Netherlands © Kunming Li, 2018 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any other means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without permission of the author. Acknowledgements As an ethnographic endeavor, this study investigates into Chinese women’s ‘beauty economy’ in the digital era. More specifically, it zooms in on the social discourses about and practices of women’s deployment and commodification of their beauty on China’s social media. It has featured two rich digital identity fields — wanghong en- trepreneurship and online livestreaming — where China has seen an increased com- modification of women’s feminine beauty as a repercussion of digital transfor- mations. The completion of this study has taken me over five years, longer than what I ini- tially expected. However, the academic journey, despite intermittent frustrations and pitfalls, has largely been a rewarding experience, which sharpened my sensitivity to humanities. Besides, the journey offered me opportunities to get connected to invaluable insights from many great people. I am grateful to my supervisors, friends, colleagues and dearest family members, without whose support I would not manage to arrive here. Firstly, I would like to extend my deepest thanks to Sjaak Kroon, Max Spotti and Jan Blommaert, whose supervision, either in forms of comments or sug- gestions, has paved the way for my academic maturity. Their encouragement and deep belief in me have always protected me from self-skepticism. Great thanks to Karin Berkhout for all painstaking editing and formatting work that substantiates this work into a book. My thanks also extend to Pika Colpaert, whose meticulous review helped me arriving here. I would also like to thank all my colleagues from the Department of Culture Stud- ies in the School of Humanities at Tilburg University, especially Paul Mutsaers, Piia Varis, Odile Heynders, Hua Nie, Mingyi Hou, Malgorzata Szabla, Sandra Wagemakers, and others, who, in one way or another, have helped ease my academic journey. Special thanks go to my wife Zhang Huan, who has accompanied me throughout my whole academic journey. Without her encouraging words, I neither would ad- vance so fearlessly. In addition, I am also grateful to my dad, whose unconditional support enabled me to go this far. Table of contents Introduction: From the self to the selfie 1 Part I: Background and framework 5 Chapter 1 The context of contemporary China 7 1.1 An unbalanced demographic structure 7 1.2 An unbalanced socio-economic structure 8 1.3 Consequences 11 1.4 New online opportunities 12 1.5 Purpose statement 15 Chapter 2 Identity, gender and erotic capital 17 2.1 Forms of capital in late capitalism 18 2.2 From capital to identity and gender 22 2.3 Erotic and aesthetic capital 25 2.4 Research questions 32 Chapter 3 Methodology and method 33 3.1 Digital ethnography 34 3.2 Case studies, research subjects and data types 37 3.3 Method 38 3.4 Data analysis: Ethnographic content analysis 41 3.5 Concluding Part I of the study 44 Part II: Designing feminine beauty 47 Chapter 4 Baifumei: Constructing aesthetic and erotic capital 49 4.1 Introducing the case 49 4.2 Baifumei and baifumei identity 51 4.3 Identity design, performance and beauty capital 53 4.4 Methodology 56 4.5 The Baifumei Bar 58 viii Capitalization of Feminine Beauty on Chinese Social Media 4.6 Performing the baifumei model 59 4.7 Baifumei audiences 66 4.8 Discussion and conclusion 70 Chapter 5 ‘Please abuse me’: Benchmarking aesthetic and erotic capital 73 5.1 The stage: Celebrity culture on Weibo 73 5.2 Ludic ‘selfie’ learning environments 77 5.3 Methodology 78 5.4 Liujishou: The judge of quality and capital 80 5.5 Please abuse me… 82 5.6 Conclusion 95 PART III: Selling feminine beauty 99 Chapter 6 Wanghong: The female-female market 101 6.1 Introduction 101 6.2 Aesthetic labor: Modeling 103 6.3 Methodology 108 6.4 Data analysis 112 6.5 Conclusion 125 Chapter 7 Livestreaming erotic capital: The female-male market 129 7.1 Introduction 129 7.2 Femininity and erotic capital 130 7.3 Methodology 131 7.4 The how and why of livestreaming 132 7.5 Dongbei Wuxue’s chronotope 136 7.6 From crush to cash 143 7.7 Conclusion 144 Conclusion: The care of the selfie 147 References 155 Summary 167 INTRODUCTION From the self to the selfie On 19 May 2017, the Chinese news reported a short item. A man working for a pri- vate corporation had been arrested for embezzling company funds (Li and Wei 2017). The amount was considerable: about nine million RMB (equivalent to about one mil- lion Euros 1). It turned out that the man had spent the money while chatting online with a young girl, who used a live broadcast smartphone application to perform what can best be described as elaborate flirting performances with a broad audience of men. The men watched the girl’s performance and showered her with presents, to be paid on the spot through another app. The arrested man never met the girl he had extensive interactions with online. In another report (China Webmaster 2017), a similar online relationship led to a tragedy as soon as it went offline. A man became so impressed with the girl he was following online that he used highly sophisticated software operations in order to disclose her actual offline location. He paid her a visit which appeared not to be favorably perceived by the girl. Upon which the man mur- dered the object of his online desire and two other people. Both incidents are connected to online practices which can be observed in tre- mendous quantities on Chinese Internet platforms. Large numbers of ordinary Chi- nese girls have embarked on a type of business in which their femininity is the cen- tral commodity. The (sometimes very lucrative) business is conducted entirely through cheap and widely available social media applications downloadable on hand- held devices and operating at very low cost. In that sense, this new form of economic practice is ‘informal’ – there is no formal employment involved, no on-paper transac- tions, no other requirements of involvement than those usually attached to ‘light’ or ‘ludic’ social media practices such as ‘following’ and ‘liking’. But we are observing a genuine ‘market’ here, a competitive one in which women need to attend to features of desirable femininity at great length and in infinite detail in order to attract large numbers of male customers; while men compete for the attention of the girls and need to display a generosity which, as we have seen, sometimes stretches the limits of their own resources. This study engages with such new, online, economic practices revolving around a designed femininity. It will inquire into their structures, modes of formation and of transaction, and will try to identify its importance for understand- 1 In this dissertation, the exchange rate from RMB to Euros is 7.84, which is based on Google finance data on 20 October 2017. 2 Capitalization of Feminine Beauty on Chinese Social Media ing the social, cultural and economic dynamics of the online world in contemporary China. The second vignette above demonstrates something crucial in this domain: that the practices I will describe and analyze are online practices and can only happen the way they do because of the specific features of online environments. The women in this study perform practices of intimacy and affection which, in offline environments, could lead to unwanted and threatening effects, ranging from strong moral stigma to being physically harmed, as in the vignette.