Kong Girls and Lang Mo: teen perceptions of emergent gender stereotypes in Hong Kong

Abstract

The aim of this study was to explore how young people perceive and evaluate two emergent gender stereotypes in Hong Kong. It examines how the young population defines and negotiates the meanings of two media labels, Kong Girls (Hong Kong Girls) and Lang Mo (teenage models), which have become a part of daily usage. Moving beyond the debates about misrepresentations in the media, the paper discusses the functions and influences of stereotypes. A survey was conducted with 920 secondary school students. The findings were mixed. On the one hand, respondents expressed either favourable or neutral views towards the two labels with pejorative meanings. On the other hand, their evaluations of the characteristics of the two subtypes revealed the traces of many existing gender expectations. Both benevolent and hostile sexism were noticeable, which also suggests that the respondents' views were based on normalised judgments. The study highlights how fashionable terms that are coined and circulated by the mass media become new labels for specific social groups, and how they can form into more solid impressions in young people's minds. The results draw attention to the power and limits of the mass media in perpetuating gender stereotypes. The discussion considers the roles of sexism, new forms of femininity and the changing media environment in teen perceptions.

Keywords:

• gender stereotypes
• labelling theory
• mass media
• sexism
• new femininities

Acknowledgements

This study, part of a research project titled Gendering Teenage Bodies: The Production and Consumption of Desire, Subjectivities and Media Labels in Hong Kong, is made possible by a funding by GFR (Project Number 443510).