Self-fashioning and economic independence are expressed as a remedy for and vigilance towards the failed patriarchal marriage. The findings reveal that the influencer culture manifests postfeminist sensibilities featured with a discourse of duality. This digital ethnographic study examines the multimodal discursive features of these videos and explores the influencers’ business model. Many housewives become beauty influencers on this platform where they film makeup transformation videos and sell beauty products. As China’s second-generation social media, the short video platform Kwai (TikTok-like platform) attracts an initial user base from smaller cities and rural areas. Responding to a call for opening the postfeminism concept for intersectional and transnational interrogation, this study draws attention to how social media platforms and the state-supported E-commerce industry are complicating the gendered live experiences in rural China. The cultural symbols and the socioeconomic structure pertaining to urban localities hence become a context for Chinese postfeminism. Existing studies mainly focus on subjects of young and single female professionals who work and live in metropolitan areas in China. This study explores the postfeminist media culture in rural China.
