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Lookup NU author(s): Dr Altman PengORCiD
This is the authors' accepted manuscript of an article that has been published in its final definitive form by Routledge, 2020.
For re-use rights please refer to the publisher's terms and conditions.
In July 2019, the Chinese mobile payment application, Alipay launched a new update that incorporated “beauty filters” into its face-scan payment system. The “beauty filters,” which beautify users when they make payments via the application, have been well received by the market. News coverage shows that the number of Chinese users who use Alipay face-scan payments increased by over 100 per cent within weeks of the update being launched, and the number of women users, in particular, increased by 123 per cent (Bing Li 2019). While acknowledging that the recent update of Alipay may enhance Chinese women’s inclusion in technology use, I argue that the update paradoxically facilitates control over women’s bodies by promoting the male gaze-based aesthetics of beauty, which confines Chinese women to forms of femininity that reiterate patriarchal values. Yet, different from similar findings by existing literature based on an observation of Western neoliberal capitalism (Ana Elias and Rosalind Gill 2018), this control is engineered by an indigenous socio-technological process, which is influenced by the specificities of post-reform Chinese gender politics (Harriet Evans 2008).
Author(s): Peng A Y
Publication type: Article
Publication status: Published
Journal: Feminist Media Studies
Year: 2020
Volume: 20
Issue: 4
Pages: 582-585
Online publication date: 18/06/2020
Acceptance date: 31/03/2020
Date deposited: 07/03/2020
ISSN (print): 1468-0777
ISSN (electronic): 1471-5902
Publisher: Routledge
URL: https://doi.org/10.1080/14680777.2020.1750779
DOI: 10.1080/14680777.2020.1750779
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