Negotiating Gendered Embodiment: Ambivalence in Chinese Girls' Gender Cultivation

A considerable amount of research has discussed gendered personhood and intensive cultivation in middle-class families. However, fewer studies have explored how, in the context of East Asia, the body and embodiment serve as critical sites for the cultivation and reproduction of gender. Based on the discussion of suzhi (quality) in Chinese context, educational achievement, and the gendered cultivation, this research will draw on ambivalence as a feminist analytic to study the contradictory experience in gendered cultivation from the perspective of both mothers and daughters.

This study, through ethnographic fieldwork in a Beijing rhythmic gymnastics extracurricular club and in-depth interviews with 30 mother-daughter pairs, reveals that gendered embodiment serves as a tool for navigating state discourse, daily life, and the frame of success. In gendered extracurricular activities, privileged young urban females in China acquire specific body techniques to manage the anxiety around meeting the neoliberal and cosmopolitan gendered expectations. This process reflects how the bodies becomes central to both internalizing and performing societal norms related to gender, success, and state-sanctioned ideals of femininity. Tensions, uncertainties, and ambivalences in Chinese gendered cultivation also provide spaces for resistance and agency. This study calls for greater attention to gender experiences in everyday life, highlighting the potential for negotiation and redefinition that arises from moments of ambivalence and uncertainty.