‘I spend lots of time on my appearance’: unpacking Chinese academic women’s gendered subjectivities through the lens of bodily performance

ABSTRACT Through the use of photovoice interviews as a research method and drawing on Butler's performativity theory, this article investigates the performative constitution of the subjectivities of three academic women in Chinese non-elite universities by unpacking the multiple meanings of their aesthetic experiences. The study reveals that these women emphasized their bodily performance in the workplace, paying particular attention to their physical appearance, including dressing and using make-up, to explicitly perform their femininity. In this study, academic women’s gendered subjectivities are produced by repetitive performative feminine bodies under the control of wider regulatory forces in terms of gender norms and institutional discourses. Our findings suggest that gender norms of beauty in the Chinese context have a profound impact on the three Chinese academic women’s choice of dress and appearance management. We conclude that (i) femininity matters during the process of academic women’s gendered subjectivity construction in the Chinese academic context; and ii) multiple and sometimes contradictory wider regulatory forces within and beyond the academia shape Chinese academic women’s bodily performance and, therefore, produce academic women’s gendered subjectivities.