後社會主義國家體操－－禮儀小姐與超級女性化

Post-socialist State Gymnastics Ceremonial Hostesses and Their Hyper-femininity

本文透過分析禮儀小姐，指出當代中國的性別現象並不是一種簡單的中國婦女「再」女性化（re-feminization）。禮儀小姐作為被凝視的性別對象，是一個由國家專門透過極為嚴謹的身體操訓打造出來的代表，她既是展示國家形象的主體，又是被凝視的客體。本文的論據為禮儀小姐那接近軍訓的、非一般的身體操練達到的並不是一般的女性氣質，而是一種超級女性化（hyper feminization）。我認為禮儀小姐的超級女性化表演，是一種體操表演，是共產國家的體操傳統以新形式的再現，所體現的是一種集合市場話語、共產主義民族美學、軍事化國力展示和黨父權新的欲望投射。禮儀小姐並沒有象徵「中國婦女」的「西化，自由化」，也不是簡單的女性身體的物化、性化、商品化。作為後毛時代的國家象徵，禮儀小姐非常複雜地反映著市場經濟放大兩性差異，商品化、性化女性氣質的社會文化，也明確顯示著國家軍事的指導規訓作用。

This essay looks at ceremonial hostess or Miss Etiquette (liyi xiaojie), a recent phenomenon of having young and attractive women serve at major national events and ceremonies, such as holding flags, placards or standing by for medal presentation at the Beijing Olympics, the Shanghai Expo or the Guangzhou Asian Games in China. This essay argues that the ceremonial hostess represents not a simple're-feminization' of Chinese mainland gender culture, but a state engineered gender performance in the new era. My arguments are (1) the ceremonial hostesses, even though they display desirable feminine qualities, are actually performing a set of exercise requiring extraordinary physical strength, flexibility, coordination and balance (2) the ceremonial hostess' performance is a new kind of socialist gymnastic, following the communist revolutionary state tradition of gymnastics' aesthetics; (3) such post-socialist gymnastics figures the contradictory forces of market reform, socialist state aesthetics, military discipline, and the party-state patriarchal gaze in post-socialist China.