Beauty beyond admiration: the intersection of female stardom chasing, cosmetic practices, and self-pleasing

Digital media platforms add a further level of complexity to the issue of celebrity agency. While platforms like YouTube, Instagram, and Weibo ostensibly democratize exposure, they are structured by commercial algorithms, sponsorship demands, and numbers of audience that determine what kinds of celebrity content flourish. has steadily recast celebrities from singular icons into instruments of collective ideology and culture. As early as 1991, Wernicks concept of promotional culture argued that cultural production was becoming ever more captive to promotional imperatives, fusing political, commercial, and symbolic interests into one seamless enterprise. This paper investigates the intersections of these three phenomenafemale stardom chasing, cosmetic practices, and self-pleasingseeking to clarify how they collectively shape womens understanding and enactment of beauty. Drawing on qualitative analysis of 50 in-depth interviews with women aged 18-35 who engage in both stardom chasing and regular cosmetic use, the study finds that stardom chasing operates as a framework for beauty cognition rather than uncritical mimicry, while cosmetic practices function as a means of self-expression and emotional fulfillment.