Chen Zhang, *Juliana Abdul Wahab

Abstract:

The ideal female body stereotype is one of the longstanding aesthetic standards in Chinese society and culture, which not only affects individual women’s self-perception and psychological state, but is also constantly reinforced in social media, with increasingly outrageous aesthetic standards causing distress in females. Red (Xiaohongshu), as the most popular social media platform for Chinese women, presents a growing number of users who are aware of the negative effects of this ideal body image and challenge it by posting positive body image posts under the theme “rejecting body anxiety”. Existing studies mostly focus on the analysis of static images or single text symbols of positive body image, and thus, the lack of research on the dynamic construction process of videos and how to construct a positive body image on the Red platform is addressed in this study. This study utilised the representation theory and employed textual analysis as the research method to analyse 134 posts by five influencers promoting a positive body image on Red.

Keywords: Positive body image, social media, Xiaohongshu, representation, stereotypes