Who’s that Girl? The Morphology of Body Aesthetics in Uyghur Communities
Nathan Grannan, Elise Tangedal, Tieji Williams
Silkworm: Sydney Brown
Ideals of beauty and body aesthetics are ingrained within every culture across the globe. When thinking about physical expression of culture and beauty, we wonder if beauty is an objective construct, or if individuals subjectively dictate it. Is beauty in the eye of the beholder? Moreover, who gets to say what is beautiful and what is not? As we examine the social constructs of beauty and body aesthetics, our inquiry takes a closer look into the historical Silk Road, and the ways beauty ideals were spread, used, rejected, and changed along these routes. More specifically, we direct our attention to the Uyghur communities within the People’s Republic of China.
The Uyghurs are an ethnic minority group of Turkic descent that live primarily in China’s far west, in a region known as the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region. Outside of Xinjiang, a small but sizeable population of Uyghurs exist in China’s Hunan Province, as well as assorted Central Asian nations ranging from Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan all the way over to Turkey. In China, there are conflicting reports on the number of Uyghur citizens within the nation; the 2010 Chinese census reports around 10 million, while other advocacy groups report that there are well over 15 million Uyghurs living in the PRC. The Uyghurs are relatively unique in China, as they speak Uyghur instead of Mandarin and are predominantly Muslim.
Silk and other beauty products were major commodities that were bargained for and traded along the Silk Road, leaving a long history of characteristics of desirability and beauty. The history of beauty ideals along the Silk Road is key in uncovering the aesthetics of beauty and body images within contemporary cultures that were part of the ancient travel routes. With ideals of beauty and body image comes discussion of gender expression and sexuality, especially with contemporary understandings of beauty and body. On the other hand, we recognize that our understanding of gender and sexuality politics are largely defined from an American and European point of view. We also recognize that the contemporary period is not static. There are and have been many radical changes just within that past fifteen years of China’s history. It is important to note that we are not removing our project from the context of history, but we are investigating possible regional differences in China’s Uyghur communities. We seek to analyze the possible morphologies of the intersections of women, bodies and queer identity across Uyghur communities in contemporary China.
(Open StoryMap in a new tab: https://uploads.knightlab.com/storymapjs/14de2725f4f414067c138aac4fdc759b/uyghur-body-and-beauty-aesthetics/index.html)
Overall, we noticed that there were stark differences between Uyghur communities in western China and Uyghur communities in eastern China. More conservative views and outlooks of beauty and body aesthetics, often dictated by religion, were found in the western part of China, namely within the Xinjiang Province. For instance, conservative dress is expected in many Uyghur communities in Xinjiang, which then affects how fashion and beauty is understood. There were more liberal ideas about beauty and bodily expression were found in China’s biggest eastern cities, such as Beijing and Shanghai. However, there seemed to be an overwhelming trend, for Uyghur women in particular, to either be celebrated and romanticized for their “ethnic” features and clothing, or to be concerned themselves with attaining White European beauty ideals.
Our subtopics explored the fashion of Uyghur women, and the roles it played in their self-expression. Within Uyghur communities, fashion can be used simply as a way to physically show social status, such as marriage status, but is also utilized as a form of protest. Along with self-expression, we investigated the expectations and policing of Uyghur women’s fashion from those outside the Uyghur minority. The policing of Uyghur clothing have developed some tensions between Uyghur communities and Chinese officials. Conversations about the imposition of beauty ideas placed upon Uyghur women are very sensitive. Discussing the marginalization of Uyghur societies was not the central focus of the project, but as the research unfolded it was difficult to ignore the situation of Uyghur communities. According to Dru C. Gladney, the struggle for ethnic identity is a longstanding dispute between Chinese and the Uyghur ethnic groups. Uyghur identity is best understood as a gradual transformation over a period of time (p.271). Lastly, in contemporary times, it is increasingly important to look at and understand gender/sexuality minorities and the queer community, especially when talking about beauty and body politics. Gay men and trans* individuals are often considered highly effeminate, and in some queer subcultures this is embraced and amplified. In the case of the Uyghur people, information on the lived experiences of queer Uyghur men and women were hard to come by, but the scraps available helped to further illuminate patterns found within more visible examples of Uyghur femininity.
A few limitations of our research include language barriers and a lack of information on our topic. Firstly, it was difficult to find sources and information because most of our findings were in Chinese or Uyghur. Furthermore, we found that searching for information in Mandarin, as opposed to English, gave us much more and very different results. But again, we had to rely on Google translate (which is sometimes unreliable) and occasional assistance from one of our professors, who speaks fluent Mandarin. There were also not many academic sources about Uyghur women and gender/sexual minorities, so we had to rely heavily on personal narratives, such as blog posts, of Uyghur and other Chinese peoples. Our lack of information on Uyghur women and gender/sexual minorities could be due to a lack of scholarly interest and accessibility to the communities, and due to censorship by the Chinese Government. Additionally, we do not know if Uyghur culture and/or Chinese culture openly discuss aspects of gender and sexuality, or if it is even something people think about, within the many different cultures within China. Lastly, we recognize that our research and our interpretation of the information that we found are from an American and/or European point of view. We could not find perspectives of beauty and body aesthetics from Han Chinese or Uyghur points of view because we could not get access to those sources, or we could not read the language. On the other hand, we were able to find a good amount of sources for our project considering the trouble that we had in finding information on our topic.
Beauty and body aesthetics are always changing throughout space and time. The Silk Road continues, but not just by foot. Technologies are playing more and more of a role in the dissemination of definitions of beautiful throughout the world, including concepts of what being beautiful means. As minorities, women and queer people hold a unique position in the creation, maintenance, or destruction of beauty, body, and physical expression. Furthermore, we believe that it is important to study how gender expression, beauty, and body aesthetics are formed—or if they are discussed in such language—especially in ethnic minority communities. Ultimately, the construction of beauty, body, and aesthetics in Uyghur communities in contemporary China is complicated. There are many, many factors that play into the changing cultural landscape surrounding beauty ideals and gender expression. Chinese lawmaking, increasing access to global ideas and ideals, and religion are some of these factors. In fact, besides European/American and Han Chinese influences, we found that a significant part of the construction of Uyghur communities in contemporary China was influenced by religion. Hopefully, there will be more interest in the construction of identity of peoples from ethnically minority groups, such as the Uyghur people, in order to have a better understanding of the diversity of human life.
What’s Next? Check out the other projects on The Digital Silk Road at Guilford College!