Intimate Activism and Chinese Postfeminist Sensibility: Female Viewers’ Responses to Reality Dating Shows

A new dating show format Chinese Dating with the Parents premiered in 2016. The show has distinctive ‘traditional’ features such as the presence of family members on set and parental advice to evaluate potential matches. Female candidates are presented as postfeminist subjects characterized by glamorous appearance, new independent female identity, and empowered status. Drawing upon qualitative interviews conducted with 23 young female viewers in Xi’an, China from 2020 to 2021, the paper elucidates the ways in which the performance and representation of female subjectivity are shaped by gender and dating within the mechanism of reality dating TV. It also explores how viewers engaged in the process of deconstructing the gendered narratives presented in the dating show by drawing connections to their own personal experiences. I propose the notion of ‘intimate activism’ to articulate a particular form of feminist activism in China reflected in this project. During fieldwork, I was struck by the fact that participants were not feminist activists, yet they were all concerning with identical issues, sharing similar anger and distress in daily lives. The analysis is structured in three sections, progressing from the new independent female subject to young women’s changing perceptions of dating, and to the female dilemma in reality dating shows. The conclusion draws together these interrelated themes, articulates defining features of the Chinese postfeminist sensibility, and reiterates how intimate activism is both a typical ramification of postfeminism and a way to articulate feminist activism oriented and provoked by media in post-2010 China.