Becoming the "Cool Aunt": Commodifying Female Independence in Xiaohongshu’s Xiaoyi Trend

The “cool aunt” archetype has gained cultural traction across global digital platforms, symbolizing a form of female autonomy outside traditional roles of marriage and motherhood. In China, this aspiration has materialized into the “Xiaoyi Style”—a viral fashion and lifestyle trend on Xiaohongshu (RedNote) that combines aestheticized independence with marketable empowerment. This study investigates how the Xiaoyi Style is constructed, circulated, and socially negotiated on Chinese social media, and what it reveals about postfeminist sensibilities and digital femininity in contemporary China. Drawing on a qualitative multi-method approach, the research analyzes 60 high-engagement Xiaohongshu posts through thematic and discourse analysis. The findings reveal four key themes: entrepreneurial empowerment, relational femininity, aesthetic labor, and ambivalence toward singleness. Distinct audience receptions (dominant, negotiated, and oppositional readings) also emerge. While Xiaoyi Style appears to celebrate female autonomy, it is simultaneously shaped by platform logics and socio-political filtering. Empowerment is repackaged into consumable, non-threatening images. Ultimately, the study argues that Xiaoyi Style reflects a culturally specific expression of postfeminism that blends emotional aspiration, commercial logic, and soft-market feminism in China’s digital landscape.