Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2023. US$32.00, paper. ISBN 9780295751764.
Modified Bodies, Material Selves explores the embodied experiences of Western and Chinese women living in Shanghai, with “Western” here referring specifically to white anglophone women. The book delves into different attitudes, practices, and ideas about the body, self, and racial/ethnic identities within the transnational flows of Chineseness and Westerness. Set in the cosmopolitan context of Shanghai, this feminist anthropology draws on the methodology of situated (counter) comparison, offering critical analyses of the intersections between race, ethnicity, and gender.
The book is organized into two parts, each with three chapters. The first part, Thinness, presents ethnographic descriptions of how Western and Chinese women in Shanghai navigate the issue of thinness through eating practices. These practices reveal three layers of meaning: selfhood, Tizhi (un-essentialized bodily self), and craving or desire. The second part, Big Eyes and White Skin, critiques racial bodies, ideas, and ideals of beauty in Chinese and Western cultures, and their intersections.
The author emphasizes that Chinese women—all educated and having migrated from rural China to urban Shanghai in this case study—view the embodied selfhood as changeable. For example, they express an understanding of identity through creating eating rituals and responding to their own particular Tizhi. For these women, pursuing beauty features like big eyes and white skin represents a cosmopolitan, class-based Asian ideal rather than the influence of Western beauty standards. For example, the “white skin” they aspire to differs from the whiteness of Westerners. They see this pursuit as a means of influencing others, neither for the self, not as capital to influence society.
In contrast, the author argues that Western women in Shanghai often emphasize their “natural” body as a way to express their authentic selves, viewing race as a natural, unchangeable category. While they possess white privilege, their romantic desirability in Shanghai is limited due to the impact of racism and sexism. The author contextualizes these Western women’s self-understanding within “democratic theories of empowerment” (167), which promote the notion that individuals should have equal influence within society yet function as autonomous selves in their daily lives. This “individual/natural self had to guard itself against the influences of ‘society’” (166). The perspective enables these Western women to be both equal and unique in their resistance to normativity of race and gender. The author engages with theories on de-naturalizing race, pushing back against racism in scholarship, and questioning notions of empowerment and individualism by emphasizing that selfhood is always socially, historically, and culturally constructed.
Written with reflexivity, the book contextualizes women’s experiences from different social backgrounds in their identity processing, both within their home, cultural, and social settings and that of Shanghai, their place of relocation. Its situated feminism acknowledges the local experiences of self-empowerment and the agency of the research informants, while also addressing the complexities and dilemmas of feminist practices in a transnational context.
The author could have approached themes of sexual appeal and sexual capital with greater sensitivity, in relation to the pursuit or rejection of normative bodily beauty. For instance, the body modification practices of Chinese women are rooted in the context of growing sexualization and commercialization of women in China. Further situating the politics of appearance within the Chinese context could have strengthened the author’s feminist critiques on the intersections of neoliberalism, patriarchy, and authoritarianism. This additional layer would offer a richer understanding of how these forces uniquely shape beauty standards and body modification practices, revealing their complex impact on women’s agency and identity in China. Scholars like Yuxin Pei, who has written on the sex and desire of Shanghai women, Yu Ding, who explores the concept of sexual capital (Chizuko Ueno critiques the concept of sexual capital in the context of how women’s body and sex are exploited), and Sik Ying Ho, Stevi Jackson, Siyang Cao, and Chi Kwok, who have co-written “Sex With Chinese Characteristics: Sexuality Research in/on 21st-Century China” (Journal of Sex Research 55, nos. 4-5, 2018), have all highlighted how sex or sexual appeal operate within these sociocultural dynamics. While the author provides an original and in-depth analysis of Western women’s experiences, a deeper examination of the racialized dynamics affecting romantic prospects (and sex life) for white women in Shanghai, particularly in relation to Chinese norms, stereotypes, and racism (Yinghong Cheng, Discourses of Race and Rising China, Palgrave Macmillan, 2019) would have enriched the discussion.
The book could have been further enhanced by better synergizing theories within its discussions, primarily as a matter of presentation. It would make the analysis more accessible to general readers, and further underscore the significance of the author’s theoretical contributions and methodological innovations. I recommend this book to students and researchers with interests in gender, race, ethnicity, China, ethnography, and cultural studies.
Jinyan Zeng
Lund University, Lund