Visual Self-Presentation through Personal Aesthetic Choice of Women in China

Chinese women's agency over their aesthetic choices have undergone many transformations in the past 30 years. During feudal society, Chinese women ought to follow women's dressing rules made by men. At the period of the Republic of China, the influence of men's power on women's aesthetic expression had gradually diminished. However, in contemporary China many are the ways that men still influence women's ability to choose for themselves. The development of global technology and changes in the domestic political system have had a considerable impact on liberating Chinese women's aesthetic choices. Similarly, male-dominated media landscape deceives women's preferences in often subtle but pervasive and abusive ways.

Performance Art - Volatile Body

Asian women are worried that the appearance stereotype driven by Asian culture will represent who they are, rather than their self-spirit-construction. The audience would question whether their choices were influenced by Chinese traditional culture, and whether their options were imprisoned by Chinese thousand-year history.

Asian Aesthetic: Ornamentalism

The performance shows a woman measuring the width of her body and recording the numbers. After rewinding the video, the audience sees that these numbers disappear from the paper and form the woman's body. This performance explores the main goal of corporeal feminism, explaining the relationship between the body and data.

Vogue China - Data Visualization

This project visualizes the key words of every cover of Vogue China since its establishment fifteen years ago, from which people can see the changes in Chinese aesthetics over the past years. Although a lot of efforts are still needed, the overall trend is increasing.

Organization for Women: NOWO

National Organization for Women Online(NOWO) is a civil organization that is dedicated to protecting the rights and interests of female netizens. NOWO opposes all behaviors that disrespect women in online social networking, such as harassment and bullying, as well as malicious criticism of women's appearance and thoughts.

NOWO VR Showroom

Users from this organization can enter NOWO exhibition space, in this space, Members can communicate with each other by voice as if they were talking face to face. This will be the meeting place for NOWO members, where they can share their insights about how to improve the events.

Critical Discourse Analysis on Streetsnaps

This project is an analysis on negative comments in female streetsnaps posted by male-dominated accounts on the RED app. According to hundreds of critical comments and those who like these comments, most Chinese netizens still cannot accept women’s free will to express themselves.

Create Safe Space: Weibo Community Guidelines

A user-based public editable Weibo community guideline website is the most ideal way to help with the situation where female users are suppressed on social media. The goal of this platform is to create safe cyberspace for Chinese women to express themselves, improve people's awareness of respecting others.

People can hear Chinese women reading the manifesto about creating cyberspace for women together, indicating that Chinese female users have the same goals and aspirations. The audience will see some of our existing guidelines. At the bottom of each page, we encourage all users to provide ideas for the guidelines.