Growing Up with “Tomboy Power”

Chapter 1 captures the self-contradictoriness of reality TV and elaborates on the nuances of how gender-norm-defying girls and young women have been framed by and are actively navigating through reality TV. The author explores this queerly gendered televisual phenomenon by examining a particular form of female masculinity, “tomboyism,” which is embodied by one of the most successful girl pop stars in the post-2010 era: Liu Yuxin, who rose to stardom in the most recent girl band-manufacturing reality program, Youth With You 2. The author’s critical televisual analysis of Liu’s tomboyism showcases the intricate relationship between televised Chinese tomboyism and the local Chinese term signifying a young, butch lesbian, “T.” She demonstrates how, along with the drastic changes in local queer and feminist cultures over the past decade, the constantly self-fashioning format and televisuality of reality TV subjectivize tomboyish stars to validate their gender and potentially sexual non-normativities while being fabricated into the official imaginary of China as a globalized, modernized nation-state.