Hua Ma explores how Chinese food culture and beauty culture shape women’s lived experiences of eating disorders.
When many visitors travel to China, they are often surprised by one particular greeting: “Have you eaten?” Why would Chinese people ask whether someone has eaten when they simply mean hello? In many parts of China, including Beijing, where I grew up, this question works almost like “How are you?” This greeting shows how deeply food is embedded in everyday Chinese life. Throughout China’s long history, famine and food shortages were common. Asking whether someone had eaten was once a genuine way of showing concern for their well-being. Sharing food and meals is also linked with social relationships, care and hospitality. Chinese people often say “being able to eat is a blessing” (néng chī shí fǒu,能吃是福). A good appetite can be understood as a sign of health, happiness and good fortune. In post-socialist China, people may be encouraged to enjoy consumption, pleasure and personal choice more than before (Farquhar 2002). Yet for women, appetite is still watched through a gendered lens.
So, what happens to a blessing when it becomes a burden?
Eating disorders are often discussed in medical terms: diagnosis, symptoms, treatment, and recovery. This does not always capture how eating distress is lived in women’s everyday lives: at the family table, during a work lunch, or in a casual social encounter. In a previous article for The Polyphony, Sarah Warriner writes about eating disorders through the feeling of control, suggesting that control is not simply a behaviour, but a way of trying to feel stable in relation to the world. My article converses with this idea from a Chinese feminist context. For the women I interviewed, control was not only something they searched for inside themselves. It was also something demanded of them by food culture, beauty culture, and the social expectation to be a “good girl.”
For many Chinese women, appetite is not simply celebrated. It is also monitored and judged. To eat or not to eat becomes a tricky question. Women are supposed to have a good appetite, but they are also expected to stay slim. Within contemporary Chinese beauty culture, women often live with relatively rigid beauty standards. They are encouraged to be fair-skinned, slim and young. Beauty is not only something women are expected to have. It is something they are expected to work on, as a form of labour, self-management and even morality (Elias et al., 2017; Widdows, 2018). A slim body can become a sign that a woman is taking care of herself, managing herself and presenting the “proper” kind of femininity (Ma, 2025).
When Thinness Becomes Measurable
The beauty standard of thinness is often reinforced by Chinese social media. For example, public beauty challenges have circulated online, such as the “A4-waist challenge”, where women compare their waist to the width of a sheet of A4 paper. Those who pass the test may post their pictures online as a way to prove their beauty (Jackson et al. 2021). There is also a popular saying that “a good girl weighs no more than one hundred,” meaning that a good girl’s weight should not exceed 100 jin (a Chinese unit of weight), or around 50 kilograms. More recently, some Chinese women have posted photos of themselves trying on children’s clothes in Uniqlo stores, showing that their bodies are small enough to fit into children’s sizes. This trend has also been linked to “BM style”, referring to the Brandy Melville-inspired fashion aesthetic associated with thinness and small sizing (Liu & Li, 2024). All these trends show Chinese beauty culture’s fascination with thinness. More specifically, they show how slimness is often turned into something measurable: a waist can be compared to a sheet of paper, a body can be fitted into children’s clothes, and a woman’s weight can be judged against the number 100 jin.
Living between Chinese food culture and Chinese beauty culture, women may face a specific cultural and gender dilemma when negotiating diet and appearance. Ng et al. (2021) describe this as a “clash of culture and cuisine,” where young Chinese women negotiate tensions between traditional expectations around eating and contemporary pressures around body size.
On the one hand, Chinese food culture encourages people to eat more and eat well. Having a good appetite is a sign of health. On the other hand, being slim is not only about being beautiful. It is also connected to moral success, because it suggests that one can control one’s weight and discipline oneself. So the difficult question becomes: how can women eat well, but remain thin? This is where control becomes an everyday experience, rather than only a medical or psychological term.
As a feminist researcher working on Chinese beauty culture and eating disorder studies, I found that this question was also raised by many participants in a collaborative project I conducted with Professor Su Holmes. We approached eating disorders through a feminist lens, understanding them as cultural and gendered issues, not only as individual medical problems (Bordo, 1993; Holmes and Ma, 2023). Eating disorders have traditionally been understood through psychological and medical frameworks that emphasise body dissatisfaction and individual psychopathology. In her work on treatment experiences, Su Holmes argues that the social and cultural dimensions of eating disorders are often marginalised in treatment, even when eating disorders are described as biopsychosocial problems (Holmes 2016). My article builds on this feminist concern, but thinks from a Chinese context: what if eating disorders are also connected to the conflicting expectations placed on women by food culture and beauty culture?
Listening to Women’s Eating Distress
In our study, I interviewed twelve women from urban China who had experience of eating disorders (most with self-reported bulimia nervosa and binge eating disorder). Many of them did not describe their eating problems simply as a desire to be thin. They spoke about family comments, peer judgement, beauty standards, shame, appetite and control. Their stories showed how eating distress can grow from ordinary parts of everyday life. One participant, Xiaoyang, described a painful contradiction. Once, when she was eating with her mother, her mother put food into her bowl and encouraged her to eat more. But at the same time, her mother also told her not to eat too much, otherwise she would become too fat and bulky. Xiaoyang was confused. Did her mother want her to eat or not? The confusion was felt through the body: the same bowl of food could mean love but also a warning; care but also a judgement. Another participant, Qianqian, recalled being told at a work lunch by a male colleague: “Aren’t girls supposed to be thin? You eat quite a lot.” She later commented, “I thought he was really rude. I was cursing him in my head the whole time.” Yet almost immediately, she began questioning herself, wondering whether she really was too fat and whether she was to blame. The comment did not end at the table. It travelled inward, becoming a form of self-questioning. Such moments reveal a larger cultural problem: women are expected to enjoy food, but not too much. They are expected to have a good appetite, but also to control it. They are expected to accept care, but not to show the bodily effects of eating. This is why eating disorders in China need to be understood not only as medical or psychological issues, but also as cultural and gendered ones.
When Beauty Becomes More Than Beauty
This is where beauty culture becomes more than beauty. In my book on female beauty and beauty practices in contemporary China, I am interested in how beauty becomes a form of work. Women are encouraged to improve their skin, body, face, clothing and manners. Beauty is presented as a set of skills that can be mastered, but only if one works hard enough. In this sense, beauty is not only about looking attractive. It becomes a way of proving that one is responsible, disciplined and willing to improve. This idea helps us understand why eating disorders are not separate from everyday beauty culture. They can reveal the pressures that many women are asked to live with: be beautiful, but do not look as if you try too hard; eat well to show your good appetite, but do not gain weight; be confident when wearing makeup, but do not feel too exposed without it; be independent, but not so independent that you are seen as unable to form a family.
Perhaps eating disorders are not only about bodies. Perhaps they also tell us something about the impossible balancing act of being a woman today. In the Chinese context, this balancing act has its own cultural shape. Food can mean love. Eating can mean politeness. Refusing food can seem rude or ungrateful. Yet the female body remains open to judgement. A woman’s appetite is not only personal; it is social. It is watched by family, friends, partners, colleagues and strangers online.
So the question is not simply: why do some women develop eating disorders? The question is also: what happens when women are asked to enjoy food, control appetite and remain thin at the same time? Perhaps this is where a Chinese feminist perspective can contribute to medical humanities. It reminds us that eating disorders are not only clinical conditions, but also lived experiences shaped by culture, gender and everyday social expectations.
That is why eating disorders are cultural and gender issues. They are not only about food, weight or appearance. They are also about care, judgement, self-control and the difficult demand placed on women to eat well, stay thin and be a “good girl.”
About The Author
Dr Hua Ma is a lecturer in Digital Media at Stirling College, Chengdu University, China and an Honorary Research Fellow at the University of East Anglia, UK. Her research explores gender, feminism, and media, with a particular focus on beauty culture and women’s everyday practices in contemporary China. She is the author of Becoming Beautiful: Female Beauty and Beauty Practices in Contemporary China (Palgrave Macmillan, 2025), and has published in journals including the Journal of Gender Studies and the Journal of Eating Disorders. Twitter: @hua_ma_99
References
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Ng, Stephanie, Yining Liu, Sarah Gaither, Samuel Marsan, and Nancy Zucker. 2021. “The Clash of Culture and Cuisine: A Qualitative Exploration of Cultural Tensions and Attitudes Toward Food and Body in Chinese Young Adult Women.” International Journal of Eating Disorders 54 (2): 174–83. https://doi.org/10.1002/eat.23459.
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