A fashionable aesthetic confounds Chinese parents—and officials
NEW F4 ARE actors-turned-musicians with pebble-smooth chins and artful coifs (the “F” is short for “flower”). Yet the boy band’s appearance last month on a patriotic children’s show caused a kerfuffle, and not just among fans. Some parents, already angry that the government had ordered them to ensure their primary-school-aged children watched the programme, complained that the foursome were not appropriate role models for young boys. What lessons could they learn from them, asked one enraged blogger, except “how to use eyeliner and lipstick?”
Slim young male stars with a taste for make-up are enjoying a moment in vogue. Labelled “little fresh meat” by their fans, who consist mostly of women in their teens and twenties, they mimic an aesthetic pioneered by singers from South Korea and Japan. The most mainstream adopt faux-innocent personas vaguely reminiscent of the way music executives once promoted Justin Bieber, a Canadian celebrity. Last year brought brief fame for the more experimental FFC-Acrush, a “boy band” whose members are women.
These groups reflect a growing interest among wealthy male urbanites in preening and snappy dressing. In 2018 sales of men’s grooming and beauty products will grow nearly 8% in China, reckons Euromonitor, a research firm. Irving, a twenty-something banker in Beijing, is one eager consumer: he puts on foundation and concealer whenever he wants to look smart, saying that it helps boost his confidence and disguise some facial scars. His parents were alarmed at first but have had to accept it, because “they want me to be happy.”
Not everyone is so tolerant. Of late the popularity of “little fresh meats” has been adding fuel to an old debate about whether young Chinese men are manly enough. During the World Cup this summer football fans speculated that a fashion for beauty over brawn could explain the woefulness of China’s national side. Pessimists like to fret, without much evidence, that the one-child policy has wrought a generation of pampered softies. Toughening them up is one justification for the obligatory boot camps that still take place annually in schools and universities. Military types complain that it is getting harder to find good recruits. Last year the armed forces reported that more than half of candidates in one city had failed basic physical tests (it blamed vices including masturbation and video games).
The Communist Party looks undecided. In July an opinion piece in the Global Times, a nationalist tabloid with government links, suggested that boys who spend a lot of time thinking about their appearance risk becoming “too delicate to deal with difficulties in their lives.” Shortly after New F4’s performance, Xinhua, the state newswire, published an editorial saying that the trend for “sissy men” was “a sick aesthetic” that “challenged tradition and order”. Yet this hyperventilation provoked an angry response on social media and earned a swift rebuke from the People’s Daily, the party’s primary mouthpiece, which noted that “courage and responsibility” come in all shapes and sizes. A newspaper published by the party’s women’s union also objected to such narrow-mindedness.
When all is said and done China’s leaders probably find well-groomed and mostly well-behaved pop idols preferable to the bad boys celebrated in some rock and rap culture. As recently as January the television watchdog was inveighing against what it considered to be the corrosive influence of hip-hop. Moreover “little fresh meats” have become bankable ambassadors for all manner of brands hoping to woo young female shoppers. Irving reckons women are simply less tolerant of men who look “basically a mess”.