When ‘Toxic’ Masculinity Meets ‘Good’ Motherhood: #NanMama (Male Mothers) as a Maternal Male Ideal on Xiaohongshu (RedNote)

Abstract

The rise of soft masculinity on social media has sparked global debate. This study examines the hashtag #MaleMother (men with ‘boobs’, symbolically or physically, who enact maternal care) on Xiaohongshu, an emerging bastion of (pseudo)-feminism in China, to explore how young women engage in gendered meaning-making online. Using feminist critical discourse analysis and compositional interpretation, this study analyzes the discourses and visual images associated with the hashtag. The findings reveal that female users project desires for maternal love onto male partners, positioning the myth of ‘good’ motherhood as an ‘antidote’ to ‘toxic’ masculinity. This fantasy of the ‘male mother’ presents an ambiguous vision of empowerment: it challenges dominant masculine tropes through parody and signals women’s growing sexual agency by re-figuring the gendered dynamics of the gaze. Yet it simultaneously perpetuates patriarchal expectations of ‘good’ mothers and remains complicit with hyper-masculine ideals. This study theorizes this paradox as an update of masculinity in post-feminist contradiction, contributing to debates on masculinity, digital feminism, and the female gaze in a non-Western context.