Description
Abstract:
In post-socialist China, beauty has emerged as a key site where gender, identity, and power are negotiated within intimate and family life. While dominant discourses continue to promote female beauty ideals such as ‘pale, young, and slim’, Confucian expectations of moral femininity persist, positioning women as virtuous wives and good mothers. This article draws on in-depth interviews with 13 urban married women in Beijing to explore how beauty is negotiated within intimate and familial relationships. Rather than viewing beauty as either oppressive or empowering, the study conceptualises it as a dynamic and embodied practice shaped by social expectations, life course transitions, shifting power relations, and familial obligations. Participants variously engaged in, complied with, or resisted what has been termed ‘serving beauty duty’ (服美役). This study contributes to feminist sociology foregrounding beauty as a lived negotiation, entangled with identity, recognition, and power in contemporary Chinese family life.