Paper Proposal

CTCS 517 – Paper Abstract

Pamela Chan

April 13, 2014

Making of the Shengnu Phenomenon

In the Special Issue of Cultural Studies, “Gender, Modernity and Media in the Asia Pacific,” authors Catherine Driscoll and Meaghan Morris, through various region-specific articles, reiterate the concept that gender “is not only a figure for modernity” but also “a crucial element of modern subjectivity and the forms of community it makes possible” (p. 172). Gender is learned, negotiated and changed through public images, and by “interweaving private sentiments and public politics,” media texts can reveal “the political unconscious and regulatory forms of gender under late capitalism” (Ong, p. 25). Driscoll and Morris, in addition, also highlight on “the role of popular media in negotiating the ongoing and changing internal tensions of modernity, not only for the nation-states that regulate, frame, import, export and often fund discrete media industries, sometimes as part of a project of ‘policing… cultural distinctiveness’, but above all for the everyday lives of people as cultural participants” (p. 165).

China’s Shengnu phenomenon is a prime example of how great a power media discourse can have over society. As a gendered category, Shengnu seem to be socially constructed by the intersecting socioeconomic complexities and transforming gender ideas that have plagued contemporary China since the end of Mao’s reign. A new gender dynamic no doubt continues to grow, and Shengnu have become both the embodiment and by-products of changing ideologies in gender, marriage and family. On one hand, they have been enlightened by the market economy and Western ideology to pursue careers and equal marriages. On the other hand, they are hopelessly stuck in the gap between ideology and reality, where the new gender dynamic in China still places more importance on women’s domesticity. Further, Shengnu, who often hold new expectations for romantic relationships and marriage, threaten middle class social ideals of the ‘ultimate’ Chinese woman: a “good wife, wise mother” with a job. Their failure to fit in with the political agenda and public culture make them convenient targets for various social and ethical anxieties (disorders) that occur.

Hence, Shengnu have retained a disfavorable position in media discourse. The common definition of the term in Baidu Lemma, the Chinese version of Wikipedia, clearly shows this: “Shengnu are modern metropolitan women with a high education, high income, and high age (relatively old in the marriage market). They hesitate about marriage as they stick to high standards in choosing husbands. Probably because they are professional, intellectual, white-collar, career women, they are too intimidating to be taken.”

“Shengnu”, which roughly translates as “left over women,” was announced by the Chinese Ministry of Education to be an official new word in 2007—and since then, its popularity as a catch phrase and a social phenomenon in China has grown to alarmingly new heights. Constantly proliferating various media sources including newspapers, journals, websites, television, and radio programs, the term has, unfortunately, become irrevocably derogatory. The melodramatic motif surrounding the Shengnu issue has defined it as an epidemic, a serious problem. Shengnu are seen as a bother to their families and to the society as a whole.

In China today, prevailing trends of media discourse continue to target and market Shengnu as a tricky problem (or a symptom) of over liberation, attributing the “problem” mostly to the women themselves, who are lambasted for having the wrong attitudes and lifestyles. Popular newspapers and magazines further elaborate on their problematic status with headlines such as, “Shengnu: they are left over for being too picky” or “Learn to get rid of the curse of being Shengnu.”  The Shengnu issue has, in short, become a widespread social hit, catching attention from all aspects of media discourse-- which continues to provide the public with inevitable exaggerations and overgeneralizations of a much too sensationalized group of otherwise very normal individuals. Stereotypes are manufactured, identities are distorted, and it is arguable that it was media discourse itself that created and problematized the Shengnu phenomenon in the first place. The constant flows of technology, ideas, information, images, all of which influence the way women are regarded in society, started this whole tangled mess.

John Fiske describes discourse as “the systems of representation that have developed socially in order to make, organize, and circulate a coherent set of meanings about social world.” Well, there is certainly a distinct discourse for and about the topic of “left over women” in modern day China. In addition to the global society’s already negative reaction and subsequent discourse of this phenomenon, men, in Chinese culture, have also created a kind of discourse revolving around women and their degree of ‘appropriateness’-- and the desirable qualities that make them either marriage material or not. Various media representations (on behalf of a male-centric hierarchy) thrust Shengnu into the public spotlight, deliberately attacking these high-achieving single women and creating a sort of media propaganda that embodies patriarchal values and criticizes women in gender issues. “Shengnu are made to be problematic because media is a business about attention,” one feminist critic suggests.

In Western societies, women are applauded for their individualism in choosing to marry late, not marry at all, or fill a non-traditional form of the marriage model. They are seen as “independent” or “liberated” individuals shifting rightfully towards a more progressive future. Yet in Chinese societies, women over the age of 27 who are intelligent, independent, successful in the workforce, and financially stable, are considered undesirable to Chinese men, stigmatized by the media, and blamed for their inability to get hitched-- because they apparently have “overly high expectations for marriage partners.”

Why is this happening in China and how long will it continue? This is the question my paper will hope to address. Why do Shengnu exist; how has the current socioeconomic situation constructed them and how have they already created changes in contemporary Chinese gender ideology? Further, why does media discourse of this gendered social transformation exist? Why have Shengnu been demeaned and disadvantaged in various forms of mass media? I’d like to investigate all of this through the lens of cultural studies.