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As China witness tremendous growth in its economy and beauty industries, Chinese women today are expected to possess both traditional feminine virtues and modern physical beauty under an Anglo-European standard. There has been a lack of scholarly attention paid to the beauty experiences of women living in mainland China; as a media researcher who was born and raised in China but educated in western communication and feminist theories, I offer a unique perspective in studying young Chinese women and how they negotiate beauty and body image in the context of globalization and mediated culturalization. Qualitative in nature, this study explored the “beauty stories” of thirteen college women in mainland China through in-depth interviews. Some distinctive themes were found: 1) These women believed the ideal beautiful Chinese woman should have a tall and thin body, double-eyelid eyes, a “water-melon seed shaped” face, fair skin, and “qi zhi” (inner beauty); 2) Body image related issues such as dieting and cosmetic surgery were centralized in these women's everyday lives, and they were under significant cultural, societal, family, and peer pressures to pursue physical beauty; 3) Cultural influences, including global media impact, on their perceptions of beauty were complex and multi-layered; 4) The women were hopeful of potential positive social change including a more open-minded Chinese society and liberation of women, and at the same time concerned about the superficiality and extreme beauty standards advocated in the media. The contemporary Chinese beauty story explored in this study is essentially different than the one we know from the West, and the findings contribute to the existing literature on beauty and body image by providing an Eastern and Chinese perspective.
Keywords: China; Chinese women; beauty; body image; cosmetic surgery; media; globalization