Becoming a Trans Celebrity in Contemporary China: Visibility, Embodiment and Post-Mao Gender Politics

This chapter examines the media representation of trans identities and the articulation of trans politics in the contemporary Chinese context. Focusing on the case studies of three trans celebrities in post-2010s China, I demonstrate how their identities and politics are narrated in and by media. The three celebrities come from different social backgrounds with divergent life experiences. Their intersectional identities have shaped their gender identifications and political leanings in distinct ways. This article demonstrates the unpredictability of translating trans identities and politics transnationally and cross-culturally; it also highlights the challenge of articulating a universal and coherent trans politics globally. It raises the question of the conditions of trans visibility in contemporary media and popular culture; it also points to interlocking power relations that privilege the ‘good trans subject’ – which are mostly middle-class, cosmopolitan, glamorous and norm-conforming trans subjects who are familiar with the mainstream discourses of gender or the global LGBTQ+ lingo. In doing so, this article suggests understanding trans identity and embodiments through the lens of the political economy of gender and social mobility.