Lecture Notes in Education
Psychology and Public Media

Empower or disempower? The Cunning Patriarchal Consumerism and Female Representation in the Chinese Online Shopping Festival “Queen’s Day”

Author

Xiaohan Huang * 1

1 Department of Media and Communication Studies, Xi’an Jiaotong-Liverpool University

Corresponding Author

Xiaohan Huang

Keywords

male gaze, female empowerment, Chinese online shopping festival, patriarchal consumerism

Abstract

Chinese online shopping festival has become increasingly important to research on cultural and societal issues related to gender. This paper focuses on the Chinese online shopping festival “3.8 Queen’s Day”, investigates the relationship between female empowerment and patriarchal consumerism power embedded in “Queen’s Day” in context of Chinese society. This paper analyses the reason of the popularity of “Queen’s Day” through the historical and societal perspective, and by critical discourse analysis of the advertisements and slogans in “Queen’s Day”, the patriarchal power presented by dominant male aesthetics and patriarchal discourse have been found. Then, through renaming “Women’s Day” and the word “Women” (“妇女” in Chinese) to “Queen”, it can be seen that patriarchal consumerism discourse has done alienation towards female by deconstructing the historical and societal meaning of the “Women’s Day”. This paper uncovers the cunning of patriarchal consumerism as inconspicuous male power seemingly empowers but actually disempowers female through ads that advocate “female independence”.

Citation

Xiaohan Huang. Empower or disempower? The Cunning Patriarchal Consumerism and Female Representation in the Chinese Online Shopping Festival “Queen’s Day”. LNEP (2021) LNEP ICEIPI 2021: 170-181. DOI: 10.54254/lnep.iceipi.2021193.

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