Women’s Reception of Male Celebrities in Beauty Advertising

Gong, Lijun and Liu, Chih-Ling (2026) Women’s Reception of Male Celebrities in Beauty Advertising. Journal of Advertising, 55 (1). pp. 63-80. ISSN 0091-3367

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Abstract

This study examines how Chinese female consumers interpret portrayals of male celebrities in gynocentric beauty advertising, contributing to research on femvertising and inclusive advertising. Drawing on reader response theory, audience reception theory, and feminist literary criticism, it explores how male objectification is decoded in a marketplace shaped by postfeminist consumer culture and authoritarian cultural governance. Findings reveal that empowerment in Chinese femvertising is profoundly ambivalent. Women derive agency, pleasure, and moral affirmation through their readings, yet these responses are entangled with patriarchal expectations and state-endorsed gender norms. Three interpretive patterns emerge: infantilization, in which care-based authority reinforces traditional role divisions; romanticized submission, in which fantasies of elite masculinity offer affective gratification but reaffirm classed hierarchies; and gender boundary policing, in which selective tolerance toward male beauty exposes the limits of inclusivity. These dynamics illuminate how desire, morality, and relational politics intertwine to produce culturally specific forms of “ambivalent empowerment”. The study advances a culturally nuanced understanding of transformative advertising, positioning empowerment not as a universal ideal but as a localized, morally inflected, relational discourse shaped by gender norms, state ideology, and shifting consumer desires and subjectivities.