Reshaping female consumer subjectivity: Beauty consumption practices in Li Jiaqi’s livestream room

Abstract

This study employs a post-feminist analytical framework to examine the consumer perceptions and behaviors of female consumers in Li Jiaqi’s beauty Livestream. It explores how female consumers pursue their subjectivity through consumption within patriarchal and consumerist contexts, and how their consumption practice reflects the awakening of women’s consciousness. This research reveals that female consumers embrace the costs of affective economics and obtain self-pleasure through labor services provided by Li Jiaqi. Meanwhile, Chinese women consumers pursue an individual makeover paradigm under the framework of patriarchal consumerism. Furthermore, this research explores the process of transition of female consumers, from a ‘shopaholic’ to a form of ‘calculated neoliberal subjectivity,’ highlighting the increasing economic independence and choices of women consumers and their resistance to patriarchal consumerism ideologies.