Vulgar Beauty

“In this gorgeously written book, Mila Zuo captures how Chinese female film stars perform beauty in ways that reflect their negotiation with the racial sexualization of their femininity. With a rigorous and lucid ferocity, Zuo boldly brings together critical theory, philosophy, aesthetics, women of color feminism, feminist film theory, and performance theory to help us understand Chinese women’s presences on screen. Fearless and powerful, Vulgar Beauty is a pleasure to read.” - Celine Parreñas Shimizu, author of The Proximity of Other Skins: Ethical Intimacy in Global Cinema

“With thorough, eye-opening, and groundbreaking analyses, Mila Zuo brilliantly scrutinizes the meaning of East and Southeast Asian beauty, showing how it is a process that has been historically framed within complex colonial and postcolonial discourses that individual stars and films must conform, resist, or play with. Offering scholars and students a new method with which to rethink East Asian and Southeast Asian stardom, film texts, and popular cultures, Vulgar Beauty will make a splash.” - Victor Fan, author of Extraterritoriality: Locating Hong Kong Cinema and Media

"[Zuo's] metaphoric language, mostly revolving around food, offers the reader not only an intellectual exploration of the power of vulgar beauty to destabilize racial and patriarchal power structures but also a flavorful and aesthetic journey in and of itself." - E. Nastacia Schmoll, Lateral

"Anyone interested in performance, in gender and sexuality, in race on an international stage, in Chinese politics and history in this century of suffering, needs to read this book. Anyone hungry, voracious perhaps, for interdisciplinary diasporic and transnational critique that engages not only with cultural but also intellectual traditions from China and Korea had better prepare to feast." - Vivian L. Huang, Film-Philosophy

"Mila Zuo offers a fresh, creative, and contextual interpretation of the formation of 'Chineseness' in the global sensorium. . . . [T]he book is an interesting read and could be assigned in a graduate or upper undergraduate class on film and cultural studies. It might also be of interest to anyone seeking a detailed and theoretically boisterous interpretation of modern Chinese film." - Erik T. Withers & Elle Lissick, Resources for Gender and Women’s Studies

“What distinguishes Vulgar Beauty is the way it constructs a fresh critical framework for understanding feminine beauty. With Zuo’s theoretical perspective and erudite analysis, Vulgar Beauty is a necessary addition to aesthetic theory and critical theories of gender, sexuality, race, and ethnicity.” - Fengyun Zhang, Film Quarterly

“Vulgar Beauty is an exciting intervention in Cinema and Media Studies.” - Chris Berry, Pacific Affairs