Performing Stories of Chinese Women’s Body Image in When I Look at Myself

Lie down.

Close your eyes.

Breathe in and breathe out.

Try to feel that every restraint on your body has been released.

Now try to feel your body.

Let’s start with your foot.

Now, try to feel your left toe.

I lay on the floor, following the instructions of Star Yuexing Sun, the director of the workshop. My breath catches as I search for the sensation in my toe. I used to be convinced that I could feel every part of my body, but right now I have a flicker of uncertainty and start to realize that I can only feel my toe when moving it. I question if I had never felt it before and never truly acknowledged that. I thought I knew it was there, existing silently, pressing against the ground as I walked, relaxing when I lay down. It has always been a part of me. But I cannot feel it right now.

When I sat up to look at it, I wasn’t surprised to see that it was indeed just an ordinary toe, with roughly cut nails and hardened skin from years of walking. I realized that it was probably the first time I looked at my toes in a very long time.

This experience was part of the rehearsal process of the performance workshop When I Look at Myself, an art project documenting Chinese women’s bodies and the stories within. In September 2024, I joined the creative team of theatre director, Star, and photographer and video director, Etonmars, as a dramaturg in a three-week workshop in Shanghai, China. Collaborating with a group of female-identifying artists and performers, the team started a journey to uncover what lies within our own bodies—not just what we think about it, but also what others think about it that shapes who we are. Together, we tried to figure out a way to explore our bodies in an honest way, without judgment. During the workshops, we openly spoke about our bodies, about the sensations we felt when we touched them, and how time had left its mark on them. The mosquito bites, lovers’ kisses, family embraces, sports injuries, scars, bruises, medical operations—these experiences had all left traces, sometimes permanent, sometimes fleeting, shaping us in ways we rarely acknowledged. Our bodies had become records of time, space, love, and alienation.

Months before I joined the team, Star Yuexing Sun and Etonmars interviewed over thirty female-identifying individuals across China and the United States about their bodies and their relationships with their bodies. The project officially started when Star met Etonmars in a contact improv workshop in Shanghai. But the concept of documenting body image emerged much earlier with Star’s realization that she rarely took the recording of her own body seriously, leading to a deeper interest in self-documentation of herself and others. Meanwhile, Etonmars, as a professional photographer, had worked on a visual project documenting the process of crying and the emotional connection between the flow of tears and corresponding feelings in parts of the human body. Starting in March 2024, Star and Etonmars interviewed and recorded participants in their homes, where they revealed their bodies and shared the stories behind the scenes. Some of their stories included ongoing weight loss journeys, body shaming from parents, and disabilities that they hid away from others. Their bodies were  personal history archives, and they began the journey of touching them, feeling them, and healing them by sharing the stories behind them.

These interviews later came together in a work-in-progress showcase on 22 September 2024 in the "Theater in Progress" section of the Shanghai Young Theater’s GOAT Youth Theater Festival. Five performers—Xiao’di, Shan’shan, Sang’sang, Xiao’e, and Ba'yi—were selected to share their own stories in the performance. During the performance, each of the performers slowly carried mirrors to the stage and told their own stories of their bodies in front of the audiences. They reenacted daily activities such as dishwashing and brushing their hair while videos of their daily lives at home played on screen. The audience experienced the performers’ stories through the contrast between the abstract gaze of the camera and their tangible existence on stage. In the end, while a video played in the background of them staring into the audience, every performer came to the center of the stage in shades of flickering lights, embracing who they are. As the mirrors the performers carried along the way were placed on the ground, they formed a road of mirrors, finally shedding light on their full bodies. The performers finished the healing process of looking at themselves as who they really are.

A few months later in December 2024, for the next iteration of the project, the creative team developed an exhibition and performance at the Department for Culture and Education of the German Consulate General in Shanghai. With a series of photography installations conceived by Etonmars and an opening performance directed by Star, they expanded their collaboration and built their work into a multidisciplinary exhibition with a series of community workshops. The audiences also got to engage further within the performance. Building upon the mirror elements in the September performance, at the end of the piece, the performers started passing the mirror around in the audiences, inviting them to participate in gaining the agency of looking at oneself without judgement.

We gave the participants the agency to choose what stories to tell and how to tell them during the performance workshops. We had to think deeper about not just what we were making but also how it was made.

During the process, the creative team realized that if the collective goal was for the participants to gain agency over their bodies, we cannot be the ones dictating how the participants should speak or act. Doing so would undermine the very purpose of the work to empower the individuals. Therefore, the creation process of the project also required a nonhierarchical setting with mutual sharing and care. Instead of the typical, professional theatremaking process that requires the director to lead, we gave the participants the agency to choose what stories to tell and how to tell them during the performance workshops. We had to think deeper about not just what we were making but also how it was made.

When reflecting on the process after the performance, Star shared with me that she truly appreciated how the participants felt empowered to openly talk about their problems with their bodies. Through sharing, we were able to build trust and start healing together in a safe space.

The trust began to build in the beginning of the rehearsals when the participants were instructed to touch—lightly, cautiously—first their own bodies, then another person’s body with their consent.

Breathe in.

Breathe out.

Now we will try to touch the body of the other person.

Choose a place on her body.

Get permission for the touch.

Put a gentle touch on her body with your hands.

Feel the pulse, the texture, the temperature.

What's the difference between your body and hers?

Or what's in common?

Xiao’di, one of the performers, shared with us how her body began to open up after several workshop sessions because she felt the warmth of the ensemble in a safe space. These embodied memories brought her back to her previous visit to her father in her hometown and how, when he placed his hand on her shoulder, she felt as though “thousands of spikes had sprouted from the skin." The embodied estrangement and detachment between them revealed their alienation from each other. As the ensemble reflected on physical touches within their families, intimate relationships, and friendships, they recognized that their bodily sensations often served as a more honest expression of their feelings.

The reflections on the experience of the body transcended intimate and familiar relationships, evolving into a continuous journey shaped by growth and aging. Remembering their bodies during puberty sparked curiosity among many participants, as they reflected on their early fascination with exploring their transforming bodies during their teenage years. Later on, the constraints of their bodies in office settings—where many interviewees found themselves physically restricted—often led to the gradual fading of bodily sensations and imagination. One of the interviewees recalled that not only did her literary imagination slowly diminish from years of writing emails in office settings, but her bodily imagination for movement also faded after sitting in an office for three decades.

Ou’lian, an interviewee in her fifties, spoke of her experience in a hospital where a doctor showed indifference toward her aging cervix. She felt reduced to merely a collection of body parts—stripped of humanity and treated as an assemblage of bodily functions under inspection. Other participants shared stories of different levels of abuse such as bullying, sexual harassment, and verbal abuse, which altered their relationships with their bodies. Words laden with hatred and judgment had become etched into their sense of self, resurfacing each time they looked into the mirror.

One performer, Sang’Sang, shared during the performance workshop,

I feel that my body is like a tree with roots like my legs…I think perhaps a certain caution and unease reside within my body. I enjoy manipulating my body like a doll, bending and dismantling it, as though it were a set of brand-new parts. After exploring the surface uses and functions, I want to delve deeper, studying the inner workings of each piece.

Like Sang’Sang, for many of us involved in the project, When I Look at Myself has gradually become more than a performance workshop. It’s an evolving dialogue seeking to reclaim what has been forgotten or buried in feminist narratives in contemporary Chinese context. In both the photography and performance industry in China, the representation of women has been long focused on the feminine idealized beauty of women, portraying only conventionally attractive women as worthy of visibility. However, by regaining the agency to look at ourselves both on camera and on stage, women who participated in the project are no longer “the other” to be gazed upon, but have the subjectivity of “I” at the center of expression. Each participant—actor, videographer, and the audience—contributes to the ever-shifting image of what it means to be seen, to be touched, and to exist. It proposes a new way for women in China to look at themselves, to create a safe space for questions and dialogue.

As the project continues to evolve, we’ve come to realize that our bodies are neither innate nor fixed entities. Instead, they are living documents, constantly breathing and changing with time, space, and the people we encounter. It reminds us of our nature as living creatures. Like a plant, the changes in our bodies’ environments, the soil in which they grow, and the care they receive from us and others shape what we become and how we appear in the world. However, this experience is often ignored because of alienation from our bodies, especially for female-identifying people. Just as Judith Butler writes, “Identity is performatively constituted by the very ‘expressions’ that are said to be its results.” How our identities perform in society reflects our understanding of our own bodies. This performance of identity is a dynamic process shaped by our bodies’ interactions and conditions, constantly evolving in response to the world.

We wanted to see if there is one “true self” residing within our own bodies.

During the performance workshop, Star asked everyone to introduce themselves not through descriptions of hometown, age, jobs, and the words that usually define us, but through our physical bodies and actions. It evoked a deeper reflection on who we truly are without all the titles and attachments. We wanted to see if there is one “true self” residing within our own bodies. This exercise later sparked rich discussions about what it truly means for us to be a woman in contemporary China under the patriarchal system and censorship.

The project participants varied significantly in age, from their twenties to fifties, and came from diverse backgrounds, hometowns, and professions across the country. But there remained a deep, collective longing to reconnect with our bodies—bodies that had long been alienated from ourselves. In her photography experience, Etonmars noticed that there was a rise of female friends who asked her to record their nude bodies in recent years as more people become aware of the changes in their own bodies. With the rise of feminist movements in China, more women are protesting patriarchal, misogynist representation and fetishizing of their bodies. In our interviews, we were surprised yet excited to find out more interviewees than we anticipated, no matter their age and background, have started the process of accepting their bodies. This reflects a new way for Chinese women to gain agency of their bodies—neither victimizing nor stigmatizing their narrative, but embracing it with self-acceptance.

In one of the post-show reflection sessions, an audience member named Cheryl wrote this: “Discussions about feminism in the Chinese context often seem either too abstract or too specific. This exhibition, however, struck just the right balance. I saw different women, and they were simply there, naturally, saying, ‘Hey, this is me.’” This project aims to suggest a new way to place the women’s own narrative at the very center of identity.

Shortly after the September performance, Star and I met in New York, and she told me that the project is still evolving as it actively incorporates a broader range of female-identifying voices from different age groups and regions. Therefore, I was also invited to become an interviewee. After months of working remotely in different cities in China, we conducted our interview session and photography at my tiny dorm room in Morningside Heights, New York. As I shifted my perspective from a dramaturg who had followed the production for months to an interviewee, it was a fascinating experience to transition from an outsider to an insider. Although I was familiar with the questions and other people’s answers, when I reflected on my body and experience, I realized that the questions touched upon parts of me that almost nobody has known about. This project was a way for us to look at what is underneath our identities, which sometimes seems impossible to describe in words alone. The process of sharing my stories with Star and Etonmars, as well as taking a photo to document my body, has become a way to heal myself of all the scars and traces that time and people have left on my body. Telling the story provided a way to look into myself from the outside.

I breathed, and I looked into the mirror. There I am: myself that is unknown to others, but finally open to the world.