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Paper short abstract

This paper explores the sub-cultural phenomenon in China known as Weiniang (fake girls, men performing hyper-feminine personas), who employ the cultural strategies of 'cuteness' and 'cosplay' to negotiate heteronormative expectations and social scrutiny.

Paper long abstract

“Such a cute child could not possibly be a girl!” (こんな可愛い子が女の子のはずがない) is a popular Japanese phrase widely circulated in manga, anime, and fan cultures, and commonly associated with narratives featuring cross-dressing or gender-ambiguous male characters. The phrase later gained significant traction in the contemporary Chinese digital sphere, where it is used to describe 2D and 3D characters from manga, anime, and games, as well as biological males who achieve androgynous or cross-gender presentations through performances of what is perceived as authentically “girlish” cuteness in everyday life.

These individuals are commonly referred to as Weiniang (偽娘, literally “fake girl”), a term that has come to denote a recognizable cultural phenomenon within Chinese online communities. This paper examines the Weiniang phenomenon through two primary case studies: the Alice Weiniang Group (愛麗絲偽娘團), a once-prominent all-male cosplay performance troupe, and Xuanmo Baby (軒墨寶寶), a well-known online streamer whose gender-crossing performances have attracted substantial attention on digital platforms such as Weibo and Bilibili.

By analyzing their performances, online self-presentation, and public reception, this paper explores how Weiniangs mobilize cosplay and cuteness as cultural strategies to negotiate heteronormative expectations and social scrutiny. I argue that, within the contemporary Chinese digital sphere, “cosplaying girlie cuteness” operates as a form of embodied resistance—an affective and aesthetic tactic that enables gender-nonconforming individuals to destabilize normative masculinity under the socially sanctioned frameworks of fandom, performance, and play. Although these performances are often ephemeral or commercially mediated, they nonetheless create discursive spaces for reimagining gendered identities in the context of streaming media and digital fan cultures.