The Libidinal Economy of China by Vig Perry Johansson;

Author:Vig, Perry Johansson;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Lexington Books

BUST ENHANCERS

Women’s magazines in the 1990s also abounded with articles and ads focusing on breast enlargement. The methods ranged from massage, creams, medicines, and bras, to cosmetic surgery.8 The most popular device was the bust enhancer that came in different forms and was sold by mail order and in larger shops for between 60 and 400 yuan (approximately $7 to $45).9 The most common type consisted of a plastic cup to be put on the breast, a hose, and a pump. The massage given by the pumping device was to increase blood circulation that, it was claimed, would result in a bigger bust.10 A variant of this was a battery-run enhancer, which was marketed as being more practical than the pump. “It’s like a new form of bra,” the ad reassured potential buyers. “It can be worn working, traveling, or while doing housework. It is so quiet that not even the people standing next to you will notice it.”11

In the mid-1990s the magazine Nüyou (Women’s Friend), which targeted teenage girls, devoted most of its back-page ads to various bust-enhancing products. Published in Xi’an by the All-China Women’s Federation of Shaanxi province, Nüyou was the fastest-growing and best-selling magazine in its category at that time.12 It was so popular that knock-off issues bearing Nüyou’s name started to turn up regularly on newsstands.13 To a large extent, Nüyou consisted of light material, covering topics such as love, relationships, lifestyles, beauty, and fashion. But it also held a considerable number of more politically correct articles about working women, women politicians, and revolutionary veterans. The magazine was very popular with advertisers, who had to buy ad space more than a year in advance.14 Since the bust enhancer is a product targeted at young women, it is in magazines such as this that we find the most bust enhancer ads. Every issue of Nüyou in 1995 carried them.

The adoration of large breasts was a relatively new phenomenon, and in the discourse of advertising and beauty articles, breasts are associated with the West, civilization, modernity, and naturalness. Just as in the West, notions of breasts in China are highly polysemic. Breasts are said to stand for everything from motherhood to femininity to good health to sexual attraction. Chinese skin care ads, as we will see in an upcoming discussion, represented nature as malicious. In contrast to this, bust enhancer ads from 1995 associated breasts with health and nature. In skin care advertisements, women were portrayed as trying to protect themselves from nature and were advised to not venture outdoors. In bust enhancer ads, however, nature is represented as pleasant, healthy, and beneficial.

In early 1995 most ads for bust enhancers actually showed women in a sunny outdoor setting. While the sun in ads for whitening creams was presented as the main threat to women’s beauty, in bust enhancer ads, it is a source of pleasure and well-being. In an ad for Eve (Xiawa) bust enhancers, we see a young woman reclining on an outdoor terrace.15 She is

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