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Cissy He
Dr. Kendra Parker
ENGL 113-03
Dec 10, 2016
Chasing Beauty: The Invisible Oppression of Contemporary Chinese Women
It is a common belief that loving beauty is the nature of human being -- especially of
women. However, not until recent decades had Chinese women started to pursue beauty.
From the establishment of Peoples Republic of China in 1949 to the end of the Cultural
Revolution in 1976, women were encouraged to looking to men both physically and mentally.
Under the propaganda of the government and the need of the society, Chinese people
considered the ability to work as the highest priority. Physical appearance was not only
unimportant, but also discouraged to be talk about. Unisex clothes were popular at that time,
dressing up was luxurious and inappropriate, and it was obscene for men to compliment
womens appearance. Following the ending of Cultural Revolution in 1796 and the economic
reform in the 1980s, China experienced rapid economic growth and strong influence of
western culture, which led to a series of transformations in peoples conception including that
of the idea of beauty. As people started to refocus on the appearance, more and more women
began to wear beautiful dresses and put on make-ups. Regardless of age and class, women
enjoy reading fashion magazines and talking about beauty-related topics, such as skin-care
and dressing. While some people think that this phenomenon indicates the upgrading of
Chinese womens status because women do not need to suppress their femininity to conform
societys expectation anymore, I believe, however, the increasing awareness of beauty poses
new pressure on Chinese women, which has stopped them from reaching their full potential.
By using feminist and sociocultural approach, I will explain how the rising
awareness of beauty affects contemporary Chinese women. Based on the agreement of a sets

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of beauty standards, people judge women as attractive or unattractive. By analyzing personal
experiences of contemporary Chinese women and previous studies, I will suggest that the
emerging notions of beauty add to womens oppression in various ways. Finally, I maintain
that such awareness has led not to womens liberation, but to intensified sexual inequality.
The notion of beauty and its influence on women has been discussed by many
literary works. In the book Beauty Myth, Naomi Wolf elaborates on her point that the notion
of beauty is like a currency system, "the last and best belief system that keep male dominance
intact." She argues that by suppressing the self-esteem and potential of women, this system
keeps women in the position that the patriarchal society want them to be in. Wen Hua, the
author of Buying Beauty: Cosmetic Surgery in China, supported Wolfs analogy that the idea
of beauty is like a currency system by pointing out that having cosmetic surgery is now seen
as an investment of future career and marriage by Chinese women. Wolfs idea is also
supported by Lisa Rofel in her book Other Modernities: Gendered Yearnings in China after
Socialism, by stating that in contrast with previous generations who built their identity on
ability or challenging the power of their leader, Chinese women born after the Cultural
Revolution generally define themselves through their bodies. What is indicated by these
authors is that the standards of beauty can be used as a means to suppress and exploit women
in a society that beauty matters, and with Chineses increasing awareness of beauty, this has
become the countrys new problem.
One way that the awareness of beauty places pressure on Chinese women is that it
makes people focus more on womens appearance than their ability, and leads to a
problematic belief that beauty and youth are the most important values of women. In Buying
Beauty : Cosmetic Surgery in China, Wen told a story of a female worker, Zhang, who was
laid-off due to the reform of stated-owned enterprises in the mid-1990s. It was difficult for
Zhang to get a new job, because she was already in her forties. Employers tended to hire

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younger and prettier women, and it was hard for her to compete with them. After finally
getting a job in a cosmetic surgery clinic, she decided to participate in the clinics commercial
event a free chance to have a series of operations. After the operations, her employer
promoted her from a part-time cleaner to a full-time position, in which she can do some
reception works asides from her previous cleaning job. The story of Zhang is not an isolated
case, and it is not outdated. Nowadays, young women ranging from high school graduates to
college students occupy a large proportion of the plastic surgerys clients. Despite the
differences in their educational backgrounds, they see taking these surgeries as investments of
future career and marriage. According to a 23-year-old university student who spent all her
savings from part-time job to undergo double eyelid surgery and rhinoplasty, I was naive to
believe that if I study hard, I will get a good job, she said, when we were about to graduate,
pretty girls and boys could get employed more easily than me. (Wen) For women,
undergoing plastic surgeries has become the most efficient way to increase their values,
surpassing studying and working. What this phenomenon communicate to the society is that
the appearance is the first thing women need to care about, which could lead to the
objectification of women. In addition, by making women to spend more resources on
improving their appearance other than ability, women risk falling behind men, and the
existing sexism beliefs that women are less able than men can be intensified, turning the
problem into a vicious circle.
Another reason such awareness of beauty oppresses Chinese women is that they
have made the natural appearance unacceptable to people, and make women feel unsatisfied
and anxious with their appearance. For commercial purpose, media often beautify the image
of women to an unrealistic extent. In a commercial of the Chinese cosmetic brand Yue-Sai,
the model was photoshoped so that she looks like a twenty-something women who has fair
skin, big eyes, and little visible wrinkles or spots on the face. Ironically, this is a commercial

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of an anti-aging product, and the model is supposed to be a middle-aged woman. Frequent
exposure to these idealized images makes the appearance of these women seems to be the
normality, and the appearance of normal women perceived as flawed and need to be
corrected. This self-criticism towards womens own bodies is evident in a research conducted
on college women in mainland China. All 13 students participated in the research reported
suffering dissatisfaction of their bodies, and agreed that this dissatisfaction is normal among
Chinese women. (Meng) The unrealistic nature of medias portrayal of women, however,
does not impair their influence on women. According to a research conducted on Taiwanese
women, although the beauty standards communicated by the media are unrealistic, they were
more often accepted rather than criticized by the audiences, due to the collectivism of their
culture, which is also a distinctive element of mainland Chinas culture. Taiwanese women
believe that as long as they pay enough effort and money, they will be able to achieve these
beauty standards. This belief adds up to their pressure by convincing them that women need
to be responsible for their looks, for if a woman is not attractive, it is because she has not try
hard enough. Therefore, women who are less attractive are looked down upon as being lazy
and irresponsible to their body. (Tsai) Criticizing womens appearance then becomes not only
common but also legitimate, pushing women even harder to fit into the beauty standards
regardless of expenses. When women treat this self-criticism as acceptable, this can make
them have lower self-esteem, and negatively affect how they perceive their value.

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(The commercial poster of the Chinese skin care brand Yue-Sai, which photoshped a middleaged women into a 20-something like person.)
When Chinese women becomes increasingly concerned with beauty issues, what
does it mean? It is true that it proves women have gained more money and freedom to dress
themselves in the way they want to. It is not true, however, that they are doing this for their
own pleasure. Their bodies has become tools that help them get jobs and marriages,
something that are always ready to be judged, rather than something that only belong to their
owners. As Chinese economy started to grow rapidly from decades ago, providing more
opportunity for its people, womens status does not improve proportionally. This is an alarm
that deserves peoples attention. Back in Chinas feudal era, having tiny feet is considered as

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a sign of beauty and virtue for women. The pain of feet-binding is extremely agonizing, but
when women got married to good men because of such feet, they would think the pain is
worth enduring. Such tragedy of the old time did not really end. If Chinese women do not
understand what it means to conform to the standards of beauty, the tragedy of feet-binding is
still playing out in our age, but with a modern context.

Works Cited
Wolf, Naomi. The Beauty Myth: How Images of Beauty Are Used Against Women. William
Morrow and Company, Inc., 1994. Print.
Meng, Zhang. A Chinese beauty story: how college women in China negotiate beauty,
body image, and mass media. Chinese Journal of Communication. 5. 4 (2012): 437
454. Web. 10 December. 2016.
Wen, Hua. Buying Beauty : Cosmetic Surgery in China. Hong Kong University Press, HKU.
Jan 2013. Web.
Rofel, Lisa. Other Modernities: Gendered Yearnings in China after Socialism. Berkeley,
Calif. : University of California Press. 1999. Web.
Tsai, Wan-Hsiu Sunny. There Are No Ugly Women, Only Lazy Ones: Taiwanese Women's

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Social Comparison with Mediated Beauty Images. Advertising & Society Review. 13. 4
(2013). Web. 10 December. 2016.