Gendered Chronotopes on Social Media Through the Lens of Small Stories and Positioning Analysis: The Case of the “Pretty Girl” on Xiaohongshu (RedNote)

This article advances the study of digital identities by integrating the concept of chronotopes, as developed within sociolinguistics, with small stories research and positioning analysis. We put forward a cross-scalar, multimodal, micro-analytical approach and demonstrate its operation by tracing the “pretty girl” as a gendered chronotopic positioning, drawing on makeup tutorial video notes from the Chinese social media platform Xiaohongshu (RedNote). We show how influencers reconfigure the cross-platform storytelling practice of sharing-life-in-the-moment to construct beauty transformation as a communal, everyday experience, diverging from the traditional makeover paradigm. The “pretty girl” positioning is tied to the mobilization of media-afforded chronotopic resources, featuring: (1) present-tense co-temporalization and (2) the semi-professionalization of bedrooms as media spaces. This integrative approach sheds light on how “girls making media” and post-feminism are situated within Chinese socio-culturally historicized yet globally entangled semiotic networks.