Portrayals of Women in Early Twentieth-Century China: Redefining Female Identity through Mode Design and Lifestyle

by: Sandy Ng (Author)

Publisher: Amsterdam University Press

Publication Date: 2024/4/17

Language: English

Print Length: 164 pages

ISBN-10: 9462988919

ISBN-13: 9789462988910

Book Description

Portrayals of Women in Early Twentieth-Century China explores the role played by woman, and their visual representations, in introducing mode design and mode ways of living to China. It investigates this through an analysis of how women and mode design were represented in the advertisements, photographs, and films of Republican-era China. This study explores the intersection of modeity and the Chinese woman, as they negotiated their changing identities through, and with, new designs that proliferated in Chinese households in the first half of the twentieth century. The advertisements, mass media, photographs and films took on the function of social conditioning, conveying to the viewers ideas of mode social standards, behavior and appearances. With women both instrumentalised within these images, and addressed through them, their visual representations became metaphors that fashioned a new portrait of China, while concurrently impacting on the identity, agency and subjectivity of women themselves.

About the Author

Portrayals of Women in Early Twentieth-Century China explores the role played by woman, and their visual representations, in introducing mode design and mode ways of living to China. It investigates this through an analysis of how women and mode design were represented in the advertisements, photographs, and films of Republican-era China. This study explores the intersection of modeity and the Chinese woman, as they negotiated their changing identities through, and with, new designs that proliferated in Chinese households in the first half of the twentieth century. The advertisements, mass media, photographs and films took on the function of social conditioning, conveying to the viewers ideas of mode social standards, behavior and appearances. With women both instrumentalised within these images, and addressed through them, their visual representations became metaphors that fashioned a new portrait of China, while concurrently impacting on the identity, agency and subjectivity of women themselves.