Toward a non-individualistic analysis of neoliberalism: the stay-fit maternity trend in Taiwan

Abstract

This paper explores the new sexy maternity phenomenon in Taiwan’s neoliberal context, focusing on analyzing mothers' intense pursuit of getting their bodies back into shape. More specifically, I problematize and nuance the taken-for-granted individualistic analyses of neoliberalism and illustrate how getting the body back into shape involves multiple social actors, a consequence of women’s relational self. Not only does women’s beauty give face to their spouses and honor the family, but consideration of social effects are decisive factors in women’s beautification of their bodies. Thus, I emphasize that the material or immaterial profit of agentic individualism can be collective. In this context, an individual’s entrepreneurial activity should not necessarily be interpreted as an abnegation of the social, since tactful management of social relationships is an indispensable immaterial labor of women’s aesthetic entrepreneurship. I propose the theoretical frame of “reconstruction of the relationality” to better understand the trans-individual relationship under neoliberalism.

The continuum of regaining one’s body: Childbirth and reproductive choice under beauty pressure in Taiwan

“…Although Wen (2013: 93) points out that ‘[t]he obsession with female beauty is rooted in stereotypical gender roles for women’, it is important to emphasize that such behaviors are not principally performed to conform to the male gaze and gendered expectations. Rather, they should be seen largely as women’s quest for freedom and autonomy, upheld and fuelled by Western individualism (Keyser-Verreault, 2018a, 2020, 2022). As Oksala (2013) argues, Women too have come to be seen, and to see themselves, increasingly as neoliberal subjects – egoistical subjects of interest making free choices based on rational economic calculations.…”