Becoming Beautiful

“A timely exploration of beauty cultures in China through the frames of feminism and postfeminism. Making use of detailed interviews and personal reflection, Hua Ma’s book deftly traces the temporal, affective and symbolic resonances of Chinese beauty culture.”
— Yvonne Tasker , University of Leeds

This book explores young women’s negotiations of female beauty and beauty practices in contemporary China, based on 20 semi-structured interviews, 10 beauty diaries, and 10 follow-up interviews with women aged 18–25. The research takes an interdisciplinary feminist approach to explore several themes related to beauty, including reasons for engaging in beauty practices, daily beauty routines and their understanding of what constitutes female beauty. Focusing on the under-researched everyday beauty practices in Chinese culture, the book addresses gaps in feminist work on beauty, particularly by examining postfeminism in China. It reveals how young Chinese women use postfeminist discourse of choice and pleasure to explain their beauty practices, while also negotiating inner and outer beauty within a Chinese social and political context. This study highlights how local values and postfeminism shape attitudes toward beauty. This book also foregrounds the issues of cultural specificity within beauty culture studies. Combining rich empirical data with feminist analysis, this work appeals to students and scholars of sociology, women’s and gender studies, feminist theory, media and cultural studies, and Chinese and East Asian studies.

Dr Hua Ma is an honorary research fellow at the University of East Anglia, UK. She is also a lecturer in Digital Media at Stirling College, Chengdu University, China. Her research interests lie in the areas of gender, feminism, media and beauty culture. Her PhD research examined young Chinese women’s experiences regarding beauty practices. She has published in the Journal of Gender Studies and the Journal of Eating Disorders .