Why is beauty a duty? (lack of) intersectionality, a paradox of solidarity and social media in Chinese digital feminism

Recently, the buzzword ‘beauty duty’ sparked contentious debates among young middle-class women. Started with defying beauty norms considered unfair to women, for they are time-consuming, costly and even harmful to health but little rewarding compared to men, the scope of discussions expanded under the enlightenment of the structural oppression from heteropatriarchy, which helped raise gender awareness but also backfired with misogynist speeches, cyber-bullying and anti-feminist discourses from women. With a case study of ‘beauty duty’, the paper deployed critical discourse analysis based on 375 posts and 1457 commentaries on Douban, RED and Weibo from a Foucauldian point of view. Due to the vagueness of the term in the changing discursiveness, this study conducted a contextual analysis in the political, sociocultural and historical circumstances to help delve into the discourses and the dynamics between them with an intersectional lens. The research questions are: In what contexts is the counter-discourse employed? What strategies are proposed to defy ‘beauty duty’? What identities are constructed in the discourses? What are the economic, sociopolitical and cultural implications behind? The findings suggest the term refers to three themes of contexts: beauty standards as constructed by male gaze; beauty products as consumerism trap driven by capital; beauty as manipulative devices on men from state. And four strategies to defy ‘beauty duty’ are proposed: no beauty practices; reversal of gender hierarchy through female gaze; resistance to heteropatriarchal power relations as everyday politics; empowerment from competitiveness with/over men on assets and social resources. It argues that these discourses deconstruct the heteropatriarchal gender norms by revealing how it conspires with state and capital to maintain gender hierarchy and criticize the shift from traditional Chinese femininity with Confucianist ethics to commodification of women forms a new disciplinary regime. While the counter-discourse helps young women subjectively construe their identities, it is appropriated into a form of gaze and self-discipline buttressed by technologies, for ‘no beauty practices’ becomes new ‘political correctness’ in pursuit of collective identity and feminism. Experiences of queer, rural, and elderly women are included in anti-neoliberal discourses with the locus of discussions goes beyond beauty norms per se further into all forms of oppression on women in a big picture. However, this intersectional representation also marginalizes and others the underprivileged groups due to class, age, sexuality and social stratification whose exclusion and invisibility are predominant. The study shows gender essentialism, elitism, anti-intellectualism and universalism imbricated with neo-liberal values remain pervasive and ideological barriers to digital feminism. Communication of issues with oversimplified forms, together with uncontextualized, fragmented and biased information in the echo chamber buttressed by state-techno configuration leads to backlashes. Thus, this article explores to (re)conceptualize ‘beauty duty’ as a critique of internalized male gaze manipulated by heteropatriarchal hegemony in order to awaken long-suppressed subjectivity of women, leading to solidarity, collective action and social changes with acknowledging realities faced by individuals and groups. Nevertheless, how different groups can transcend representational limitations and follow feminist principles through digital feminism in post-socialist and reforming China needs further inquiry.