Manipulation of the ‘Female Form’: Performing Digital Femininity through Platformed Visibility on Xiaohongshu in Chinese Digital Culture

Sammanfattning

This thesis examined how digital femininity is produced, stabilized, and normalized through platformed visibility on Xiaohongshu. It approached femininity as a visible, embodied, aesthetic, and behavioral formation shaped through platformed self presentation. Drawing on Butler’s performativity, Foucault’s concepts of discipline and visibility, and platform studies, the thesis analyzed Xiaohongshu as a visibility regime. It used a qualitative, interpretive, case-based analysis of five creators and seven posts. The analysis identified two recurring logics: Normative Optimization and Compensatory Conformity. Normative Optimization refers to femininity produced through correction, refinement, consumption, and enhancement toward dominant norms. Compensatory Conformity refers to femininity stabilized through compensatory alignment when bodily, aesthetic, or gendered presentation partially deviates from those norms. The thesis found that Xiaohongshu rewards femininity that is visually coherent, searchable, affectively engaging, and commercially compatible, while still allowing creators to inhabit and bend these forms through stylized variation.