Gender and Postfeminism in Chinese Reality Dating Shows

This open access book explores the representation and reception of female subjectivity in contemporary Chinese reality dating shows. Conceptualising gender as discursively and performatively constructed, and dating as mediated through the reality television format, it examines how female subjectivity is circumscribed by gender, familial relationships, and dating practices. The book further investigates how these performances are shaped by broader policies and campaigns, as well as how female viewers actively deconstruct the gendered narratives. Drawing on texts-in-action viewing sessions and interviews with 23 young women in Xi’an, China, this study demonstrates how Chinese dating shows reinforce patriarchal norms by reinventing traditional matchmaking rituals and inciting women to sustain a postfeminist sensibility, which conceals systemic, structural, and taken-for-granted inequalities. The book contributes theoretically and empirically to feminist audience studies, mediated intimacy, and debates on how postfeminism and neoliberalism are lived, experienced, and represented. It is relevant to readers curious about media and gender studies, feminist theory, and East Asian studies.