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"People Don't Attack You If You Dress Fancy": Consuming Femininity In Contemporary China, Sally Mcwilliams

Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Faculty Publications and Presentations

Twenty-first-century Chinese cities are spaces not only of architectural hybridity displaying the co-temporality of the dynastic past and the postsocialist future but also locales in which young women perform and negotiate the polyvalent discourses of what it means to be a woman in China. When many students in U.S. college classrooms are asked to offer images of Chinese women, the most frequent (and in some instances pernicious) representations are those of the lotus-footed woman, the state-indoctrinated Maoist revolutionary, the dutiful mother who must adhere to the draconian one-child law, or the young athlete from the dour state-run sports training facilities.The …