“Eileen Gu fetish” as a feminist phenomenon: the intertwining of feminist, neoliberal, and nationalist discourses on Chinese social media

ABSTRACT

During the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics, Eileen Gu attracted considerable attention and sparked numerous discussions on Chinese social media. Using the method of textual analysis, this paper examines the various responses of Chinese women, particularly Chinese feminists, to Eileen’s achievements on Chinese social media, framing these responses within recent studies of neoliberalism’s undoing of feminism as well as long-standing debates about the relationship between feminism and nationalism. This paper argues that discussions about Eileen on Chinese social media not only illustrate how neoliberalism is absorbed, reworked, and resisted in its transnational circulation but also demonstrate how nationalist narratives can be strategically used by Chinese feminists to validate their feminist positions. It further enriches existing scholarship on neoliberalism with a transnational perspective, reaffirms the importance of contextualizing the relationship between Third World feminism and nationalism, and highlights the significance of uncovering indigenous feminist resources in Third World countries.

KEYWORDS:

• Eileen Gu
• neoliberalism
• nationalism
• Chinese feminism
• social media

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. Weibo and Douban are two Chinese social media platforms that are widely used by Chinese women. This article chooses to analyze the discourses on Weibo and Douban because of the large number of users, especially female users, on these platforms.

2. This article treats China as a member of the Third World. According to Mao Zedong’s Three Worlds Theory, which was proposed in 1974, the First World consists of the United States and the Soviet Union; the Second World consists of Japan, Canada, Europe, and the other countries of the global North; and the Third World consists of China, India, the countries of Africa, Latin America, and continental Asia. Mao’s theory is predicated on the Cold War-era global system and is no longer applicable to the world order of today. Nevertheless, China has continued to refer to itself as a Third World country to highlight its ideological ties to the countries of Africa, Latin America, and continental Asia.

3. Cijing literally means “competition between women.” It refers to the phenomenon that some women have internalized sexism and the male gaze and are therefore accustomed to competing with other women to win men’s favor.

4. Tangping is a buzzword on Chinese social media. It literally means “lying down” and metaphorically refers to a state of being at ease with the status quo. It expresses young Chinese people’s feelings that they are tired and have no hope for the future. So they decide to stop working hard, which is seen as useless and meaningless.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Qianqian Li

Qianqian Li is a PhD student in the College of Liberal Arts at The University of Texas at Austin. Her research interests include twentieth- and twenty-first-century American and Chinese literature, women’s and gender studies, and feminist media studies.