The Re-Capitalization of Queer Style in China’s Ballroom Scene: Dress, Embodiment, and Creativity

This article examines capitalization dynamics within the body styling of selected ballroom members in China. Drawing on interviews with ten participants and observations in two Kiki balls, this study examines the specific styling strategies they employ, revealing their motivations and concerns, including the financial implications of bodily modifications and the competitive demands of aesthetic labor in self-couture. Through a queer of color critique lens, this study brings subcultural capital into conversation with queer styles to show that creativity, functioning as a form of subcultural capital, mitigates the dominance of mainstream capital, enabling ballroom members to exhibit their DIY stylings without designer-brand clothing or professional styling resources. However, because the required creativity is influenced by taste and esthetics, it inevitably creates new modes of distinction within this subcultural scene. This process, whereby anti-capitalist creative practices are reworked into new hierarchies of distinction, is what this study terms re-capitalization. Re-capitalization is relationally connected to capitalization; it emerges through negotiation with, rather than complete separation from, dominant systems of value across social, cultural, and economic domains. This study contributes to Chinese queer and fashion studies by demonstrating how DIY creativity, while initially transcending structural inequalities, ultimately recreates new forms of capital.