Chinese beauty standards
Today we discussed the beauty standards to which young people in China are held.
In essence, the fundamental desirable attributes for men and women are broken down into two pithy sayings.
For men, gāo fù shuài 高富帅, meaning 'tall, rich, handsome'. Often translated as 'Mr Perfect'. There's not a huge amount to discuss about that; this seems like a fairly universal beauty ideal. There is a whole other kettle of fish about women's expectations of men here that's much trickier. Women say the standards for male personal behaviour are incredibly low. Having a 'second wife' is normalised and so on. If you want to read a good book on this that will make you very angry, check out Leftover Women by Leta Hong Fincher. Men say they have almost unachievable demands placed on them before they're considered dateable: own an apartment, have a good job, have a car. I suspect both are true. Particularly popular right now is nvxing duli 女性独立, or women's independence, but that's another subject.
And for women, bái yòu shòu 白幼瘦, meaning 'white, young, skinny'. Starting from the end, shòu 瘦 has the radical (a component of a character) for illness - a reflection of the not-so-recent past when being overly thin was a sign of sickness and poverty. But it is now very much in demand. All sorts of fad diets circulate online, plus unreferenced images of how much women at different heights 'should' weigh. It's judged, in BMI terms, to be borderline underweight.
The body positivity/'fit is beautiful'/'beauty at any size' movement that's really taken off in the west over the past few years is mostly absent here, at least in the mainstream. And given how extremely online much of life is here - particularly for young people - there seems to be immense societal pressure to look a certain way. You open Taobao, WeChat, Alipay - any one of the All In One Life Apps - and are quickly assaulted with photoshopped images of impossibly thin necks, emaciated legs, bleached faces. Even fashion styles are pretty homogenised within categories: princess, punk rocker, high fashion. There seems to be heavy convergence to a few nationwide fashion standards that are perpetuated by social media and apps that make buying new outfits extremely low-friction.
As for yòu 幼, it means young or youthful, but with a... well, an emphasis on being almost childlike. I personally find it a bit strange but it's very much in vogue here. A small, 'skinny', particularly white face with red lips/lipstick is usually how you see it expressed. It's very common on pop stars ('idols') and actors. The 'K-Wave' of Korean culture, which hit China in the early 2000s, is probably partly responsible for the current popularity of idol culture and for this very youthful aesthetic. Youthfulness is certainly considered attractive by almost all cultures, but it seems to be taken to another level here. Wearing iris-enlarging or colour-changing contact lenses is also totally normalised, and most camera apps and social media platforms will apply by default whitening, smoothing, beautifying filters to pictures. I recently bought a new phone here, and had to fiddle around in the settings to get the default 'AI enhancement' to leave my photos alone. (Although, to be fair, it did improve the photos I took, fiddling with things like exposure, saturation and colour balance.）
Finally, bái 白, 'white'. Back home, tanning under the sun is rapidly losing popularity as we learn more about skin cancer. But a 'healthy tan' still implies you have the leisure time to be able to exercise outdoors, maybe travel internationally - perhaps your hobby is boating. Here, a tan means you're a farmer, simple as that. UV protection is taken to another level: people often don niqab-like headwear, not out of a newfound love for Allah, but out of fear of shài hēi 晒黑 - a tan. ('shai' meaning to bask or sun, 'hei' meaning black). Almost all beauty products, from deodorant to moisturiser, have an added whitening function.
Next time: levels of reality and calling someone a jerk by calling them a turtle egg.