"Women can be young at any age" : a discourse analysis of the reality show Sisters Who Make Waves : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science in Health Psychology at Massey University, Wellington, New Zealand
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2022
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Massey University
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The thesis aims to gain insight into the discourses used in the Chinese reality show Sisters Who Make Waves. The show appears to be China’s first show featuring middle-aged female celebrities as participants. These celebrities explicitly seek to expand the discourse of what is possible for older women. In the context of traditional constructs of middle-aged female identities in China, this presents the possibility of a “new identity” for women in this age bracket. Therefore, this thesis wants to understand how the reality show constructed the potential new identity for middle-aged Chinese women, and to examine if the show transferred the coherent information to its claimed purpose. To address these aims, a discourse analysis of a whole season of Sisters Who Make Waves, supported by semiotic analysis of some of the visual content of the show, was performed to 1) identify the discourses constructing age and gender for Chinese women and 2) the linguistic strategies used by these middle-aged celebrities in the show with a focus on the subject positions constructed in their talk, and how the non-celebrity ordinary female audience was invited to understand themselves through these subject positions. I adopted FDA as my main research method to understand how the reality show constructed middle-aged women’s subjectivity. I also applied DP’s discursive devices/tools to examine how the rhetorical strategies used in the show invite the female audience to take the subject positions affectively. Four main discourses are described, theses are, “age is a problem for women”, “age is only a problem if you let it”, “embrace knock-backs as they make you stronger”, and “you can only rely on you”. These discourses reframed age as an advantage for women; middle age could not be a problem if women adopted a young mindset and self-confidence; middle-aged women could be beautiful if they exerted constant effort. These discourses also created ideal subject positions of confident women, young mindset women, forever young women, fighting sheroes, truly brave women, relentlessly positive women, independent women, and family-oriented women. The analysis identified the repeatedly used rhetorical strategies that affectively addressed the female audience to take these subject positions. Women who are invited may feel empowered and devote themselves to meeting the ideals, but they are likely to self-blame for failing to achieve these goals. In the context of stigmatized identities about older women, these “sisters” make waves to provide potentially empowering ways for older women to think about themselves. However, this potential is often negated through individualist discourses that ignore social inequalities.