Proceedings of The 11th International Conference on Research in Behavioral and Social Sciences
Year: 2023
DOI:
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Missing Blood, Fake Smile and Extreme Sports: How Cultural Localization Shaped Chinese Menstrual Product Advertisements
Guanrui Cai, Xingyi Chen
ABSTRACT:
While menstruation itself is biological, the depictions of menstruation, as a female obligation of management, are subjected to cultural and social dynamics. Menstrual product advertisement is a particularly pertinent example of this discursive process, as it further vested an obligation to consume menstrual products onto the existing conceptions of female menstruation. The contemporary understanding of menstruation reflects structures that reproduce gender inequality, a pattern consistently identified in scholarly works. This research focuses on a particular locale—China. Specifically, commercials have become a vital channel for feminist expression regarding menstruation in mainland China, as the “patriarchal authoritarianism” structure suppresses collective and individual feminist expression. This research employs discourse analysis to document the descriptive and discursive functions of 41 Chinese menstrual product advertisements of varying brands. This research inherently reflects on the tension between balancing the “universality” of the Western ideal of consumption-based feminism and the “specificity” of the history and culture of China. It identifies cultural localization processes in the advertisements, as transnational corporations employ the westerndominant cooption between feminism and consumption in the distinct cultural context of China. It further documents the imitation of such marketing strategies by local brands. This research argues that the localization of advertisement harbors and transforms existing menstrual taboos, and further invents new forms of taboos with an emphasis on postfeminist consumption. These findings serve as crucial reference points for female empowerment in China under the influence of the neoliberal consumption economy and the authoritarian patriarchy.
keywords: advertisement, China, cultural localization, menstruation, postfeminism