The Sculpted Body: Empowerment and Struggle of Chinese Wanghong Female Bodybuilders’ Identity on Xiaohongshu

The study examines how Chinese wanghong female bodybuilders present their identities on Xiaohongshu. Though muscularity has been male-coded and female-excluded, the feminism and consumerist culture pack the female body into a post-feminism ideal that aligns with neoliberalism, encouraging the circulation of muscular female figures. The research adopts a qualitative approach combined with digital ethnography and semi-structured interviews, selecting 150 posts from 15 IFBB PRO female bodybuilders' posts on Xiaohongshu (over 5,000 followers, 10 posts per account), with 6 IFBB PRO participating in the 60-minute WeChat interview. Findings are clustered into three themes. First, muscularity as empowerment is contested. Second, the multiple commercialized identities drive self-branding strategy. Third, the platform's affordances shape their body and identity performance. The study contributes to sports communication and feminist media studies by offering a non-Western context that demonstrates how platforms' governance, market logics, and gender politics interplayed and shaped muscular femininity in China's digital economy.