Trading Beauty, Making Race: Whiteness in China’s Fashion Modelling [ECR]

The Manchester China Institute (MCI)promotes excellence in China studies at the University of Manchester. MCI hosts in-person talks, workshops, and roundtables, and well as webinars with a global reach. Our public events are free and open to all. The University of Manchester is committed to academic independence and thefreedom of speech. The views speakers present are entirely their own, and do not represent those of the University of Manchester or the Manchester China Institute and its directors.

Manchester China Institute

In this Early Career Researcher Workshop, Ke Ma will explore whiteness in China’s fashion modelling industry.

While racial politics in the fashion industry has been the subject of critical race studies, the role of transnational mobility in such politics has thus far not received much scholarly attention. This paper investigates the social enactments of race in China’s fashion industry, where an increased demand for white-looking fashion models has created a thriving job market for white-looking foreigners to migrate to China as short-term laborers. Drawing on my ethnographic fieldwork conducted between 2021 and 2022 in Shanghai’s modelling agencies, this paper examines modeling agents’ practices, such as selecting foreign models, facilitating models’ migration to China, and selling their looks to local clients. This paper demonstrates that while a global racial hierarchy of beauty largely remains in its place in China’s modelling industry, the trading of models’ looks is shaped by more than just racialized beauty standards. The Chinese state’s classist and racist border control and the changing popular perceptions of the Chinese Self vis-à-vis differentiated foreign Others also play indispensable roles in upholding and contesting white superiority within this context. Finally, the paper proposes moving away from an essentialist approach to race by focusing on how race achieves its significance through various relationships.

A﻿bout the SpeakerK﻿e Ma is a PhD student in the Anthropology Department at the University of Amsterdam, researching the cultural politics of race in contemporary China. Her PhD project explores how whiteness as a racial category is articulated and negotiated in China&#x27;s cultural industry.

N﻿otesMCI’s ECR Workshops are lunchtime seminars held in person at the <a href="https://www.mci.manchester.ac.uk/" target="_blank" data-msys-clicktrack="0" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer">Manchester China Institute</a>. They seek to bring together students, faculty, and staff who can best provide feedback as Early Career Researchers develop their ideas. Free lunch will be provided.

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Trading Beauty, Making Race: Whiteness in China’s Fashion Modelling [ECR]

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Trading Beauty, Making Race: Whiteness in China’s Fashion Modelling [ECR]

More events from Manchester China Institute

Discover more events from Manchester China Institute, from Fashion to other experiences you might love.

Leftover Men and Women: The Politics of Reproducing Patriarchal Norms

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