Abstract
Feminist media literature illustrated that empowerment for middle-aged women intertwines with regulation and synergies between postfeminist feeling rules and Chinese state ideology of Positive Energy and how media images of older people change from stigmatic stereotype to diverse self-representation within Chinese context. However, (self-)representation of aging and older women from feminist perspective on social media has not been fully explored. Adopting the social semiotic approach that aligns with critical discourse analysis with an intersectional lens, the study analyzes representation of gendered aging from a life course perspective based on posts and comments on RED(xiaohongshu). The study focuses on this platform for its position as a young, female community and its technological affordance. This research investigates what discourses are used to portray aging/-ed women and their lifestyle, the dynamic power relations between the construction, resistance and negotiation on women’s aging on social media, in order to reveal what ideologies and implications are behind in post-socialist China. It argues that postfeminist ideas with neo-liberal values is still predominant in the discourse of women’s successful aging, but nuance is also found on the entanglement of women’s disciplined body and agency under self-surveillance and patriarchal norms from previous studies. Moreover, against the backdrop of East Asian (beauty) culture, representation of Chinese older women from intergenerational perception demonstrates how Confucian femininity and motherhood play an important role in ideal image of aging/-ed women. And how the rhetoric “authentic self” and transnational ideals of women’s aging are appropriated to construct aging/-ed women’s “identity suspension”.
Presenters
Shujie FengPostgraduate Student, School of Humanities, Zhejiang University of Technology, Zhejiang, China
Details
Presentation Type
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session
Theme
Social and Cultural Perspectives on Aging
KEYWORDS
Digital feminism, China, Gender discourse, Life course, Social media
