User:Ht231/Internet Celebrities

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Define wanghong

Internet celebrities are known as social media influencers, although in different countries they are named differently, for example, the Chinese version of Internet celebrity is named Wanghong, whereas in Japan it is named net idol. An Internet celebrity means people who get famous through the internet platforms, such as Twitch, Instagram, YouTube, Twitter, etc. These influencers can contact others in different places by accumulating popularity and gaining fame through various internet platforms.

Examples of recent wanghong

Here are some examples of recent internet celebrities. WeiYa, Who is Philips, P&G, Liby and many other global brands’ recommendation officers, and also the Taobao first anchor. At the age of 17, she started her business by running a clothing store. She used to be a singer and a host. After retiring from the entertainment industry, she continued to run a clothing store. Taobao has more than 10 million fans, more than 10 million viewers on average in live broadcast rooms, and more than 300 cooperative brands. The other example is Li JiaQi. People in China named him the lipstick one brother because he sold a lot of lipsticks and also he is the best selling lipstick in China. After he graduated from college in 2015, Li got a job as a BA consultant in a COSMETICS store in Nanchang, Jiangxi Province China. In 2016, the cosmetics brand Mei ONE cooperated with L 'Oreal Group to carry out the program of "BA (offline counter sales staff) becoming online celebrities", and she was originally a BA of L 'Oreal, who took this opportunity to transform herself into an online celebrity anchor. In 2018, she took the Guinness World Record for the most people wearing lipstick in 30 seconds. Since then, she has been known as "lipstick Brother". In the same year, during the competition of "Double 11" PK with Jack Ma, she eventually beat Jack Ma who became the top seller of lipstick. In 2019, Li was listed on Forbes China. All of the experiences made her the head of Taobao with the owner of the goods, beauty cosmetics category KOL ranked first (according to the number of fans and interactive quality), behind MCN agency Beauty ONE. Besides, Li Jiaqi has a huge number of fans, including the Internet platforms such as Weibo and Tiktok, and many other platforms - roughly 40 million Tiktok fans, and 12 million Weibo fans. At present, the total number of fans on the whole platform exceeds 60 million.

How wanghong is compared to women from the revolutionary movement

In the old society, women had no equal rights as men. They could not choose people who they wanted to marry. Moreover, women could not have formal jobs. In comparison, In Nowadays society, all things have changed. Women have equal rights as men, or at least close to equal rights as men. Women have free choices about their marriage. Women can find a formal job as they wish such as being an internet celebrity. The example of WeiYa demonstrates that women can not only do a job well but also earn a lot more money than men. And the example of Li JiaQi demonstrates that everyone has equal opportunities in today's society, which is a completely different society compared to the society during the revolutionary movement.

Live-streaming

With the rise of wanghong and the various short video social media platforms such as Douyin and Tiktok, many females has choose wanghong and creating short videos as their career paths. With the creation of short videos comes along with fame and money. After gaining fame, they will start live streaming which provides a platform for them to interact with their fans. At the same time, many business opportunities are created during this live streams. During live streaming, many wanghong will choose to recommended products to their fans and talk about the advantages of the product. With each product sold through live streaming, this creates profit for the wanghong. Over the years, this industry have flourished and many business are looking to wanghong to help to promote and advertise for their products. This job is different from the traditional female occupation as this requires initial fame before they can help to promote and sell products. It is also a job that has become popular within the last decade. It gives many woman the flexibility to balance between work and home since one can choose when to start live streaming or film a short video. It is definitely more different from post-reform times because this job is able to succeed also due to the improvement and development of technology. This is something that women during post-reform times do not have accessible to.

Women During Late-Qing Dynasty

The late-Qing dynasty was no feminist utopia (Fan, 1997). Responding to the difficulties of being a woman in Qing dynasty, feminist movements began in both rural and urban areas in the late 19th century in China as a collective response to structural powers that systematically prioritized men over women (Croll, 1978). As the late Qing dynasty responded to foreign invasions and debates over “Mr. Confucius” and “Mr. Science” (Chow, 1960), debates were had on the role of women in society. In some cases, they were portrayed as idealized warriors, as in Wu Shuqing and the "Women's Revolutionary Army" (Edwards, 2008, p. 48). In other cases, they were relatively ignored as marginal revolutionary figures, as in the case of He Zhen (Zarrow, 1988). In both cases, and much beyond, women articulated their own voices in the creation of revolutionary china.

Women During Revolutionary Time

Despite more nuanced debates over the history and meaning of the May 4th movement (Chen, 2011), understood in a much more general way, the May 4th Movement marked the beginning of a new era in Chinese history (Mitter, 2004) and was a period of enlightenment thinking (Schwarcz, 1986) premised, in part, to harsh criticisms of aspects of Chinese tradition (Lin, 1979) in which the structured disempowerment of women was one key part. Later, Japanese imperialism, in particular the invasion of Manchuria which latter developed into the “rape of nanjing”, which translated to both the forgetting of cases of collaboration (Boyle, 1972; Brook, 2005) to the over-remembering of women being later portrayed as the perennial victims of the Chinese nation (Chang, 1997; Fogel, 2000; Wakabayashi, 2007). In such cases, the “women” was understood as a representation of the entire country and foreign incursions were understood as a form of “rape”. This gendering does a disservice to feminism as it inscribes the female body on territory.

In contrast to the above, Chinese communism was hugely beneficial to the development of feminism in China. While it is important not to over-romanticize the revolutionary movement in China as being ideal for feminists, the changing economic policies between 1949 and 1980 (such as the First Five-Year Plan and the Great Leap Forward) has a positive impact women’s employment, health, and educational opportunities among many others (Andors, 1983). During the period of the Cultural Revolution, communication industries, in particular those controlled by the Red Guard, were an important platform to re-particular China’s previously subjugated classes (Zhao, 2008, p. 197) such as peasants, worker, and also women who were, at least at the institutional level, officially respected as equal comrades. Communicative activities of the Red Guards communication activities were genuine grassroots “information empowerment” (Zhao, 2008, p. 197). However, with the death of Mao, end of the Gang of Four and the conclusion of the Cultural Revolution, the media took on new tones with “opening up” and marketization (Zhao, 2008, p. 199), which in turn led to revolutions in many areas. One such area was in the role of women in society.

Women During Post-Reform Time

Post-reform, there have been developments in employment, laws have developed to deal with the female labor force over the past decades as economic and institutional changes in the post-Mao reform era redefined gender and economic roles (Re-drawing Boundaries: Gender, Households, and Work in China, 2000). Post-reform could be characterized by a “traditional” alternative female vision of a desirable personal future where a husband rather than personal development was the key to success. Hooper (1984) argues that these gender stereotypes perpetuate unequal participation for women in higher education and employment for women in China. This can be seen embodied in the post-reform discussion of whether “women workers should return home” in the context of post-privatized industries which led to massive women layoffs and also the creation of women migrant workers in the city as a social class (Z. Wang, 2000) and where women en-masse had to find new work in a restructured economy (Gong, 2002).

In one analysis of the post reform era which looked at the years 1978-1995, the scholar found that there were many challenges, as well as some opportunities, faced in the early reform era (Meng, 1995). Others interpret the mass loss of jobs by women workers and massive social upheaval during the 1990s economic restructuring as opportunity to awaken their collective consciousness (X. Li, 1994). However, today, while state policies and measures exist to protect that interests of women workers in China many simply do not know them or they do not actually affect their everyday life (Pan, 2002). Even in academic article discussing the measures in place to protect women in the workplace, there is no mention of sexual harassment (Tang, 2001) in the larger context of the culture of sexual labor in companies where women’s sexuality is, on the one hand moralized but on the other hand never openly discussed (Liu, 2008). The above is particularly disconcerting as the growing gendered wage gap (Gustafsson & Shi, 2000) and also because women are more likely than men to be involved in informal employment which translated not only to lower pay but also to working outside of stable and legal working environments (Tan & Li, 2003). Some scholars even use Confucian gender ideology (with a focus on sons over daughters) to explain the changes in gender-and-employment-related policies as well as laws enforced in the post-Mao era (Tiefenbrun, 2016) as if the differences in China were natural and were due to the presence of civilization (Huntington, 1993) instead of competing political, historical and situated considerations (Mackenzie & Wajcman, 1999). Other studies have located that, despite operating in the difficult terrain of global capitalism, the socialist state and the patriarchal family, there are acts of feminist resistance and transgression in the workplace (Ngai, 2005).

Revolutionary Art and Live-Steaming

Mitter, R. (2004). A Bitter Revolution: China’s Struggle with the Modern World. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Ngai, P. (2005). Made in China: Women Factory Workers in a Global Workplace. U.S.: Duke University Press.

Pan, J. 潘锦棠. (2002). Zhongguo nvgong laodong baohu zhidu yu xianzhuang 中国女工劳动保护制度与现状. Funv Yanjiu Conglun 妇女研究论丛, 4, 12–16.

Re-drawing Boundaries: Gender, Households, and Work in China. (2000). U.S.: University of California Press.

Schwarcz, V. (1986). The Chinese Enlightenment: Intellectuals and tTechnology was thought of a way that could empower women to re-craft their situation and enforce a social relation (Haraway, 1991). However, it is wrong to be overly optimistic or even pessimistic (Wajcman, 2006). Instead of focusing on either utopia or dystopia, simple increasing the awareness of the relationship between gender, politics, and technology is important (Wajcman, 2007, p. 293). This approach to society helps us understand how everything is related and nothing can be taken on its own.

In terms of live-streaming, since it exploded onto the online retail scene in 2016, live-stream shopping has opened a new channel to allow internet users to indulge in the instantaneous consumer lifestyle (Tam, 2019). Drawing from Berger’s work in visual culture and communication, one can see the cultural change and contestation through images. The “ways of seeing” help us understand different imagined audiences and also different positions within the realm of popular culture (Hall, 1981).

“Advance victoriously while following Chairman Mao's proletarian line in literature and the arts” (沿着毛主席的无产阶级文艺路线胜利前进) is a visual image from revolutionary time. The picture depicts a woman leading the people behind her. She is carrying what is presumably a red lantern which is highly symbolic within China. Also, none of the men are looking at her but they are instead together looking at the final goal. She is not the “token women”, as there are also other discussions taking place and women are also present. The woman is also not a fetish as being the symbol carrier, simply carrying the flag, but is seen instead actually embodying the march in which the flag is in the marginal background.

The 1965 “The East Is Red” (东方红) again show women as being equals. Women are being shown between themselves acting as a social class. Also, woman is shown to be a major actor and performer, helping the story move along. In neither case are the women in these two stills, or in the entire film, sexualized. In neither case are their valued on their ability to cater to the desires of men or to “act cute”.

This stands in stark contrast to some forms of female participation on various live-streaming platforms. In live-streaming, some women are dressed in a sexually appealing way and in a highly feminized space “perform” for payments from primarily men.

These issues are compounded by the nature of live-streaming itself. When the live-streamer explained to her audience that those who felt upset in the day do not have to worry as they can come and give her a hug, she became a “consoling voice” to men.

Women from today’s live-streaming stand in stark contrast to the women portrayed in the red films of yesterday. Before, women were represented as equals and able to contribute to society in a meaningful way. Today, in live streaming, women are represented through the visual gaze of men and are able to contribute not to society, but to the desires of men. This represents a genuine shift in China from its communist roots to its current reality post-reform.

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Hangzhou Fine Arts Group collective work (杭州市美术工作团供稿). (1972). Advance victoriously while following Chairman Mao’s proletarian line in literature and the arts Yanzhe Mao zhuxide wuchan jieji wenyi luxian shengli qianjin (沿着毛主席的无产阶级文艺路线胜利前进), 53x77,5 cm. Zhejiang renmin chubanshe (浙江人民出版社). Retrieved from https://chineseposters.net/posters/e13-713.php

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