The Gendered Performance at the Beijing Olympics: The Construction of the Olympic Misses and Cheerleaders

This article analyzes the gendered performance at the Beijing Olympics by analyzing at the elite cheerleaders and Olympic misses, including medal and country presenters at the Olympic and Paralympic opening and closing ceremonies. Drawing upon participant observation, unstructured interviews, media reports, and blogs, this article argues that the paradoxical construction of Chinese women stands for the broader context of Chinese modernity. The seeming paradoxes of tradition and modernity, and Oriental femininity and Occidental sexuality perpetuate old and produce new gender politics in China. The internally contradictory hybrid representation of gender in contemporary China contributes to feminist communication theory by illustrating not only uneven processes of modernity but also the continuing importance of gender in nationalist politics.