Abstract
This paper investigates how female fitness communities on Bilibili—China’s leading video-sharing platform—negotiate empowerment, body aesthetics, and gendered visibility within the context of postfeminist discourse. As more Chinese women transition from gym-based training to digital workout routines, Bilibili has become a significant space where fitness is not only a physical practice but also a sociocultural expression shaped by gendered media dynamics. Drawing on semi-structured interviews with 26 women aged 18 to 35 and qualitative textual analysis of fitness videos and user interactions, this study examines how users collectively community boundaries through acts of interaction, content moderation, and emotional exchange. These participation reveal the ambivalent nature of digital labor—where emotional investment and community care coexist with platform governance and gendered moral expectations. Findings suggest that fitness on Bilibili functions as a site of embodied practice and cultural negotiation. Women’s collective engagement is not simply a response to health or aesthetic concerns but reflects broader negotiations over agency, belonging, and self-representation in a gendered digital environment. Through daily practices of care, regulation, and affective solidarity, female users reshape what it means to be strong, visible, and socially connected in a postfeminist fitness space. This study contributes to scholarship on digital sports culture, feminist media studies, and platform governance by revealing how gendered bodies, emotions are negotiated in contemporary Chinese fitness communities. It highlights the evolving forms of agency and selfhood in non-Western digital contexts and offers insight into how gendered digital spaces can become sites of both empowerment and subtle discipline.
Details
Presentation Type
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session
Theme
Sporting Cultures and Identities
KEYWORDS
Fitness culture, Women, Social media platform, Postfeminism, Body image
