Makeup as a postfeminist masquerade: understanding the impact of beauty tutorial engagement on young Chinese women’s appearance satisfaction

ABSTRACT

Beauty tutorials, one of the most popular media genres among young Chinese women, promote makeup as a self-beautifying ‘masquerade’ for women to cope with societal lookism. This genre celebrates postfeminist self-empowerment by providing young women with role models (i.e. beauty influencers) who successfully transform themselves with makeup. Drawing upon the theoretical frameworks of social media engagement, social comparison, and postfeminism, this study investigates the psychological mechanism through which active beauty tutorial engagement influences young Chinese women’s appearance satisfaction. Results of an online cross-sectional survey (N = 473) indicated that (a) cognitive-affective, behavioural, and relational engagement with beauty tutorials positively predicted women’s appearance satisfaction. (b) Perceived similarity to beauty influencers mediated the relationship between beauty tutorial engagement and appearance satisfaction. (c) The moderating effect was more pronounced in predicting appearance satisfaction against perceived similarity when female audiences held stronger postfeminist beliefs. This study contributes to our understanding of the impact of active social media engagement on female well-being and broadens the applicability of postfeminism by quantitatively validating it in the understudied Chinese context.

KEYWORDS:

• Beauty tutorial
• social media engagement
• perceived similarity
• postfeminism
• appearance satisfaction

Acknowledgments

The authors thank the editors and reviewers for their patience and thought-provoking comments on the improvement of the manuscript.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

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The authors have agreed to the submission of this article and it is not currently being considered for publication by any other print or electronic journal.

Additional information

Funding

The authors received no financial support for the research, authorship and/or publication of this article.

Notes on contributors

Baoyue Cui

Baoyue Cui is a Ph.D. candidate at the School of Journalism and Communication, Xiamen University. Her research interests lie in media, culture, and society. She can be contacted via [email protected].

Xinying Yang

Xinying Yang is a Ph.D. candidate at the School of Journalism and Communication, Xiamen University. She focuses on employing interdisciplinary approaches to explore the impact of social media on women’s well-being, as well as the intersection of gender and popular culture. Her work has been published in international peer-reviewed journals such as Feminist Media Studies, Communication & Sport, International Journal of Public Opinion Research, and Chinese Journal of Communication. She can be contacted via [email protected].

Ruolan Li

Ruolan Li is a Ph.D. student at the School of Journalism and Communication, Hunan University. She can be contacted via [email protected].