Identity, Self-Identity and Beauty in Chinese Female Worker

*Li Yun and Rong Rong*

#### **Abstract**

In this chapter, we leave "the Cultural Study" in the contemporary researches on beauty, claiming economico-political matters in our self-acceptance and image projection. Rather than studying the standard set for the middle class, we examine the middle-class dream in the self-acceptance of contemporary Chinese female migrant workers. We take "The Sundress", a poem written by Wuxia, a migrant worker in Shenzhen, as an example, arguing that it is mainly the political and economic ideologies that function in the overdetermination of the contemporary working class' projection of beauty in China. In the poem, the "I" speaker, a steam press operator working late in the night, (mis)identifies herself with a middle-class girl who buys and puts on the dress that she irons. She takes great pleasure and tranquillity in picturing the beauty and the leisure time that the idealized "you-I" in the dress enjoys. What's more, our linguistic study testifies that she, as the speaker in the poem, is subjectified by the (mis)identification. Her self-acceptance, activeness and sense of control arise when she overlaps herself with that idealized body image. A great loss, however, is engendered by her having to leave that body and the fantasy world.

**Keywords:** beauty, identity, the working class, the economico-political, Chinese migrant worker's poetry, overdetermination, subjectification, linguistics

#### **1. Introduction**

Contemporary cultural studies on beauty, western or Chinese, besides studies from traditional aesthetic perspectives, can be roughly put into three categories, including research on (i) how mass media represent beauty; (ii) how bodies are regulated, beautified and simulated as the effects of consumerism and mass media; and (iii) whether subversive discourses are plausible or not. In these studies, the representations of women are taken as the most illustrative to display beauty politics. Gender, race and ethnicity are the key notes in case studies, which scrutinize the sexisms and/or racisms in different cultures. What is largely ignored, however, is the class status of the owner of the body. Scholars study mutually middle-class standards but seldom touch the representation of the working class, especially how they perceive and project their own bodily images. It reinforces the public impression that only the upper classes deserve the word "beauty". The academic complies with the global systematic marginalization of the lower classes.

What's more, scholars lose interest in investigating the crucial role of the economico-political in overdetermining (if we could use this Althusserian coinage) the representation of beauty. In China, however, its significance has long been noticed. For example, it dominates the representation of women in Chinese

left-wing and socialist cinemas. Because of Marxism, female characters are represented on the basis of class status rather than of sex. Relevant studies notice that body images are moulded in accordance with the ideological and propaganda demands of a particular historical era. In the left-wing cinema (1930s), women are represented as the oppressed, and stars are invited to play charming but wretched "mother" or "daughter" of a beautiful but suffering China. In the early stage of the People's Republic of China (henceforth, PRC) (1949–1965), they are represented as the "master" of "the new nation", and the working-class stand is required. During the Cultural Revolution (1966–1976), female stars perform awakened farmers, workers and soldiers, revolutionaries tearing down "the old world" [1–6]. In the 1980s (the Reform and Opening Up began in 1978), female beauty is also displayed in a way to lead the spectator to reflect on the fate of the nation, especially the economic and political (and of course the cultural) "errors" in the Cultural Revolution [1, 6].

builder of its economy. In the post-socialist era, however, they lose their social privileges, politically and financially. Their self-acceptance changes as their social status changes. To understand it, we can compare the self-projection in Wu's poem with the (self-)presentation of working-class women from 1949 to 1964. As Wang Zheng shows in her researches, in the socialist epoch when working women are interpellated as the glorious working class, female film directors and magazine editors present healthy, strong and working women as beauty. The sick image of "bourgeois ladies" is to be transformed [5]. In the twenty-first century, however, the class status of the working class "falls". Migrant workers are regarded as "strangers" or "outsiders" (外来) by the cities in which they live and work. Economic ideologies belittle their contributions to the nation. At the same time, they become financially vulnerable [8–11]. In short, the working class loses its pride in

We see therefore the middle class dream the imagined ideal-I in "The Sundress".

We see the effects of consumerism and mass media in this idealization, because the "beauty" represented by "you" exemplifies the middle-class tastes that "I" may get from mass media. What's more significant, however, is the (mis)identification in the fantasy. "I" take "your" life as the ideal life, "your" image as the ideal image, "your" body as the ideal body that "I" should have. I project all my fantasies about beauty onto that image, regarding it as an idealized "my" body and describing vividly how that body looks. On the other hand, the "I" does not take her working body as pretty. Rather, she believes that the body of the ideal "you-I" is glamorous. The glamour comes partly from the dress I iron but more from the fact that you enjoy the dress and the leisure that I cannot afford. I take that middle-class you as superior to me. I want to please that "you-I". In contrast to the foregrounded charm of "your" body, however, "my" body seems invisible. "I" seldom focus on it. The reader only sees a pair of hands and a vague figure in a factory uniform. The vagueness betrays an

Our linguistic study on the poem testifies the (mis)identification. We argue that "I" become active only when "I" am connected to "you". Conventionally speaking, the "I" is the subject in the poem because she is the first-person narrator and is in an interlocution with someone in her imagination. We, however, do not read much activeness in this subjective position. On the contrary, our linguistic study discovers that her activeness comes from her identification with "you". It is this (mis)identification that makes "me" the subject. In the poem, the "I" seems passive before she enters her fantasy world and after she detaches herself from it. But when she is in her fantasy and mixes herself with the imagined body, she becomes active, both physically and mentally. Not only the idealized body is active, but the real body in parallel also becomes active and capable of control. Her imagination is activated. She gives a more vivid and specific description of the movement of her real body,

unsatisfaction in the speaker with her identity as a migrant worker.

In the poem, there is a sharp contrast between two bodily images. One wears a sweaty factory uniform, working late in an enclosed factory and having no time and money to enjoy the prettiness and happiness brought by the dress she makes. The other puts on the dress, having a wonderful time of love in a park. The imagined body is active, running, swirling and laughing, glowing in the dress that "I" made. The real body that "I" am in, however, is confined to my position in the packing area of the factory, busy ironing and packing the dress that "you" wear. The imagined charm of "your" body is in sharp contrast with the plainness of "my" body in reality. I have great pleasure in picturing the beauty in that body because I take subconsciously that body as an ideal-I that should be me. Therefore, at the end of the poem, we sense a loss in her when she detaches herself from the fantasy since she has to pack the dress so that it could go to some boutique to be bought by the

self-acceptance, while middle-class standards become global.

*Identity, Self-Identity and Beauty in Chinese Female Worker*

*DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.92108*

"girl unknown" before she gets off work.

**23**

Studies on the presentation of women after the mid-1990s (in 1992 Deng Xiaoping published the southern speech on reform), nevertheless, have "the cultural turn", as consumerism invades Chinese popular cultures. The socialist representation of the Iron Girl during the Cultural Revolution was criticized in the 1990s. What was discarded together with it is the Marxist methodology. Research interests shift to the cultural to detect sexism in Chinese culture. What is missing in these studies, however, is the (re)presentation of working-class women, especially how contemporary female workers accept and display their own bodily images. When we come to the self-perceptions and image projections of the working class, "the Cultural Study" becomes immediately insufficient. Though the cultural is still significant, the weight of the socioeconomic can never be overstated. They function in symbiosis. Often the economico-political trumps the cultural in shaping our acceptance of our identities.

Though their perspectives are middle class, the existing studies do inspire us in one aspect. That is, the acceptance of one's identity and bodily image is always determined by the ideal-I in the imaginary of the owner of the body, as Lacanian psychoanalysis finds. If the physical body does not match the imagined ideal, artificial beautification, physical and/or imaginary, may be needed. Our selfperception and image projection depend on our self-identification. The elements overdetermining our self-identification also determine our image perception. We see, therefore, the limitation of the existing studies on beauty politics. Though elements related to gender, race and ethnicity are not negligible, we must restate the significance of the economico-political in shaping our self-identity and image projection. We don't even need a socialist feminist perspective to inform us that the self-perception of the working class is overdetermined by their economic conditions as well as how they are interpellated or hailed by the ideological apparatus.

In this chapter, therefore, we study the self-perception and image projection in the poetry of contemporary Chinese female migrant workers. Here we see how their socioeconomic status and the way they are hailed shape their acceptance of their bodily images. We limit our study to a linguistic analysis of the projection of beauty in "The Sundress" [7], a poem written by Wu Xia, who worked in a garment factory in Shenzhen when she wrote it in 2013. The poem describes vividly the interior monologue of a female worker who works late in the night, ironing a beautiful sundress. The "I" speaker is talking to "you", another female figure in her imaginary, fantasizing how "you", putting on the dress "I" ironed, can enjoy leisure time in some park with your lover. "I", the worker, (mis)identify myself with that idealized middle class "you-I" [8] and pictures a pretty body that "I" should have.

We argue, however, that the misidentification is paradoxical in the Chinese context. It displays a reverse of the acceptance of the working class of their social identities, caused by the transformation of economic conditions and political ideologies. In socialist China, they are addressed as the master of the nation and the

#### *Identity, Self-Identity and Beauty in Chinese Female Worker DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.92108*

left-wing and socialist cinemas. Because of Marxism, female characters are

*Beauty - Cosmetic Science, Cultural Issues and Creative Developments*

body images are moulded in accordance with the ideological and propaganda demands of a particular historical era. In the left-wing cinema (1930s), women are represented as the oppressed, and stars are invited to play charming but wretched "mother" or "daughter" of a beautiful but suffering China. In the early stage of the People's Republic of China (henceforth, PRC) (1949–1965), they are represented as the "master" of "the new nation", and the working-class stand is required. During the Cultural Revolution (1966–1976), female stars perform awakened farmers, workers and soldiers, revolutionaries tearing down "the old world" [1–6]. In the 1980s (the Reform and Opening Up began in 1978), female beauty is also displayed in a way to lead the spectator to reflect on the fate of the nation, especially the economic and political (and of course the cultural) "errors" in the Cultural Revolution [1, 6].

represented on the basis of class status rather than of sex. Relevant studies notice that

Studies on the presentation of women after the mid-1990s (in 1992 Deng Xiaoping published the southern speech on reform), nevertheless, have "the cultural turn", as consumerism invades Chinese popular cultures. The socialist representation of the Iron Girl during the Cultural Revolution was criticized in the 1990s. What was discarded together with it is the Marxist methodology. Research interests shift to the cultural to detect sexism in Chinese culture. What is missing in these studies, however, is the (re)presentation of working-class women, especially how contemporary female workers accept and display their own bodily images. When we come to the self-perceptions and image projections of the working class, "the Cultural Study" becomes immediately insufficient. Though the cultural is still significant, the weight of the socioeconomic can never be overstated. They function in symbiosis. Often the economico-political trumps the cultural in shaping our acceptance of our identities. Though their perspectives are middle class, the existing studies do inspire us in one aspect. That is, the acceptance of one's identity and bodily image is always determined by the ideal-I in the imaginary of the owner of the body, as Lacanian psychoanalysis finds. If the physical body does not match the imagined ideal, artificial beautification, physical and/or imaginary, may be needed. Our selfperception and image projection depend on our self-identification. The elements overdetermining our self-identification also determine our image perception. We see, therefore, the limitation of the existing studies on beauty politics. Though elements related to gender, race and ethnicity are not negligible, we must restate the significance of the economico-political in shaping our self-identity and image projection. We don't even need a socialist feminist perspective to inform us that the self-perception of the working class is overdetermined by their economic conditions

as well as how they are interpellated or hailed by the ideological apparatus.

**22**

In this chapter, therefore, we study the self-perception and image projection in the poetry of contemporary Chinese female migrant workers. Here we see how their socioeconomic status and the way they are hailed shape their acceptance of their bodily images. We limit our study to a linguistic analysis of the projection of beauty in "The Sundress" [7], a poem written by Wu Xia, who worked in a garment factory in Shenzhen when she wrote it in 2013. The poem describes vividly the interior monologue of a female worker who works late in the night, ironing a beautiful sundress. The "I" speaker is talking to "you", another female figure in her imaginary, fantasizing how "you", putting on the dress "I" ironed, can enjoy leisure time in some park with your lover. "I", the worker, (mis)identify myself with that idealized middle class "you-I" [8] and pictures a pretty body that "I" should have. We argue, however, that the misidentification is paradoxical in the Chinese context. It displays a reverse of the acceptance of the working class of their social identities, caused by the transformation of economic conditions and political ideologies. In socialist China, they are addressed as the master of the nation and the

builder of its economy. In the post-socialist era, however, they lose their social privileges, politically and financially. Their self-acceptance changes as their social status changes. To understand it, we can compare the self-projection in Wu's poem with the (self-)presentation of working-class women from 1949 to 1964. As Wang Zheng shows in her researches, in the socialist epoch when working women are interpellated as the glorious working class, female film directors and magazine editors present healthy, strong and working women as beauty. The sick image of "bourgeois ladies" is to be transformed [5]. In the twenty-first century, however, the class status of the working class "falls". Migrant workers are regarded as "strangers" or "outsiders" (外来) by the cities in which they live and work. Economic ideologies belittle their contributions to the nation. At the same time, they become financially vulnerable [8–11]. In short, the working class loses its pride in self-acceptance, while middle-class standards become global.

We see therefore the middle class dream the imagined ideal-I in "The Sundress". In the poem, there is a sharp contrast between two bodily images. One wears a sweaty factory uniform, working late in an enclosed factory and having no time and money to enjoy the prettiness and happiness brought by the dress she makes. The other puts on the dress, having a wonderful time of love in a park. The imagined body is active, running, swirling and laughing, glowing in the dress that "I" made. The real body that "I" am in, however, is confined to my position in the packing area of the factory, busy ironing and packing the dress that "you" wear. The imagined charm of "your" body is in sharp contrast with the plainness of "my" body in reality. I have great pleasure in picturing the beauty in that body because I take subconsciously that body as an ideal-I that should be me. Therefore, at the end of the poem, we sense a loss in her when she detaches herself from the fantasy since she has to pack the dress so that it could go to some boutique to be bought by the "girl unknown" before she gets off work.

We see the effects of consumerism and mass media in this idealization, because the "beauty" represented by "you" exemplifies the middle-class tastes that "I" may get from mass media. What's more significant, however, is the (mis)identification in the fantasy. "I" take "your" life as the ideal life, "your" image as the ideal image, "your" body as the ideal body that "I" should have. I project all my fantasies about beauty onto that image, regarding it as an idealized "my" body and describing vividly how that body looks. On the other hand, the "I" does not take her working body as pretty. Rather, she believes that the body of the ideal "you-I" is glamorous. The glamour comes partly from the dress I iron but more from the fact that you enjoy the dress and the leisure that I cannot afford. I take that middle-class you as superior to me. I want to please that "you-I". In contrast to the foregrounded charm of "your" body, however, "my" body seems invisible. "I" seldom focus on it. The reader only sees a pair of hands and a vague figure in a factory uniform. The vagueness betrays an unsatisfaction in the speaker with her identity as a migrant worker.

Our linguistic study on the poem testifies the (mis)identification. We argue that "I" become active only when "I" am connected to "you". Conventionally speaking, the "I" is the subject in the poem because she is the first-person narrator and is in an interlocution with someone in her imagination. We, however, do not read much activeness in this subjective position. On the contrary, our linguistic study discovers that her activeness comes from her identification with "you". It is this (mis)identification that makes "me" the subject. In the poem, the "I" seems passive before she enters her fantasy world and after she detaches herself from it. But when she is in her fantasy and mixes herself with the imagined body, she becomes active, both physically and mentally. Not only the idealized body is active, but the real body in parallel also becomes active and capable of control. Her imagination is activated. She gives a more vivid and specific description of the movement of her real body,

the working hands. The "I" speaker is subjectified by her misidentification with the idealized "you-I". We can illustrate it through a close reading of the poem.

25 陌生的姑娘 The girl unknown

*DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.92108*

*Identity, Self-Identity and Beauty in Chinese Female Worker*

The poem consists of 26 lines which feature the voice of a clothing factory worker, who talks about her work as a steam press operator. Her job is to iron pieces of sundress before packaging. The speaker also describes her emotional involvement in the process of ironing the dress, represented in the form of her addressing a hypothetical hearer "you" about how the dress should be worn (we will explain below why we treat the speaker as female). The poem is divided into four stanzas; the first three describe, respectively, the scenes before ironing, during ironing and after ironing, which correspond to the time before her fantasy,

Of course, she feels pretty in her fantasy. Our study, however, is not on what that prettiness is but what causes that charming feeling, i.e. her self-acceptance and sense of control. Remarkably, the linguistic features in the poem show that her activeness and sense of control fluctuate as she enters and leaves the dream world. Her self-acceptance also rises when she prepares for the ironing and fantasizing. It goes to the peak when she invests herself into the fantasy and overlaps herself with the ideal image. When she has to leave the dream world, however, she loses her activeness, self-acceptance and sense of beauty. In the last stanza, her language indicates a great reluctance to be detached from the ideal-

The "I" speaker only feels active and charm when she is not in her real body. The poem begins with plain language, describing the reality that she is in. But when she gets closer to the dream world, her language becomes more vivid and colourful. The first few lines establish the physical environment where the speaker

One of the first and most prominent features in these lines is the specificity of the here-and-now context in which the speaker is situated. This context not only involves the specific place, time and participants but also is "coloured" by a certain mood of commitment. First, the poem begins with the locative expression "the packaging area" which has the duo effect of anchoring the ongoing events in a particular place and also activating readers' frame knowledge about factory work. With this knowledge, readers are able to interpret the word "iron" in line 2 as specifying "I" as a steam press operator and also read the modifier "灯火通明" (literally meaning "fully lit up")

Also, the adjective "所有的" ("all") modifying "my hand's warmth" is used to indicate the high degree of temperature caused by the pressing work. Both these adjectives are used as amplifiers ([12], p. 429) which function to dramatize a tough working environment against which the speaker is about to begin her night shift. Against this setting, the speaker is presented, however, as physically static. The first verb "握" ("hold") in line 2 is a transitive stance verb, suggesting no change for the time being ([12], p. 747), while the second verb "集聚" ("collect") in line 3 is used metaphorically to refer to the accumulation of heat from my hands and the transmission of it to the iron (so that I could iron the dress with love). Altogether, these introductory lines help to position the reader within an immediate and close distance with the speaker who, while being physically static, is fully committed and

1 包装车间灯火通明 The packing area is flooded with light

3 集聚我所有的手温 And collect all my hand's warmth to it

as suggestive of the time of the day (i.e. late at night).

26 我爱你 I Love you

in her fantasy and after her fantasy.

2 我手握电熨斗 I hold the iron

prepared for the pressing work.

**25**

ized image.

is working:
