"Full of Gong Energy" Is Now the Label for Fashionable Young Women. How Popular Is It? | QDaily Anthropology

Born from "danmei" (boys' love fiction), the term carries values that are more women's own, and it is cooler, which makes it easier to turn into a consumer trend.

The character "gong" ("attack") was originally meant for men: forceful and proactive. Mostly, of course, it was used in the BL (Boys' Love) culture consumed by "fujoshi" ("rotten girls," female fans of male-male romance), where "gong" and "shou" ("receive") describe the two partners in a male couple. The "gong" (Japanese seme) is the active partner and the "shou" (uke) the passive one: in English, the top and the bottom. Who is gong and who is shou? The question also asks who is on top and who is underneath, who is strong and who is weak.

Lately, though, "full of gong energy" has suddenly begun to be applied to women, as a special kind of praise.

"Gong energy" is often used to describe female characters on screen, because they are always written to be the most ideal and the most dramatic. A "gong-energy heroine" usually has a forceful personality, a sort of female version of the domineering type. Familiar examples include Zhang Pengpeng, the man reborn in a woman's body in Go Princess Go; the rebel hero Imperator Furiosa in Mad Max: Fury Road; and the "queen" Cate Blanchett in the lesbian film Carol.

It is also used for actresses. One trending search on Weibo was "celestial-fairy gong," with Liu Yifei, Guo Biting and "Crown Princess" Zhang Tian'ai as its standard-bearers. Zhang Tian'ai earned the label with a remarkable role in a web drama. The other two earned it through androgynous styling, reality-show appearances and lesbian rumors, in which they showed a toughness unlike their earlier screen images. Between "celestial fairy" and "gong," between personality and role, lies a charming contrast, what the Chinese internet calls "contrast cuteness."

"Gong energy" has become a trend. Type the two characters into a search bar and you will find many names that once had nothing to do with "manliness," all advertising their androgynous charm: "appeals to men and women alike," "I'll turn you, like it or not."

Why is this happening? These women are clearly not just a bunch of "nü hanzi" ("manly girls")! Right. Both share "masculine traits" that set them apart from the traditional image of the perfect woman, but so-called "gong energy" presents itself as a more aspirational role model.

"Manly Girls" and Gong Energy on One Side, "Sissies" and Girlishness on the Other: What Is Going On With These "Boundary-Crossing Words"?

Before exploring what "full of gong energy" means, notice how the phrase is built: it applies a trait traditionally seen as masculine to a woman.

In the most binary division, these traits belong to women: soft, delicate, refined, sentimental. These belong to men: tough, rough, more rational. This is close to common sense. A clear line divides men and women, not only because their bodies are built as two different kinds, but also in personality and in their roles in the family and society.

These once "opposed" traits are now crossing the line more and more, but how to use them is still a fine art. Men are happy to be praised as gentle, considerate and particular. Broader feminine labels are another matter. Words like "niangniangqiang" (effeminate) and "sissy" have been insults from the day they were coined and have never changed. Men even dislike "androgynous"; in the real world, many men think it is just a polite way of saying "effeminate."

Women are different. When a boundary-crossing word implies that she looks masculine, is not refined enough or lacks charm, she will not be pleased. "Nanrenpo" (man-woman) is a pure insult. But describe her as being as successful in her career as a man, with an easygoing, free-spirited personality, and "androgynous" becomes a welcome word, meaning roughly: this girl is pretty cool.

"Full of gong energy" was born from this picking and choosing among gendered traits. Compared with earlier terms, it stresses women's power. Not physical strength, and nothing to do with too much male hormone: it means being strong, having presence, being excellent. It is a compliment.

Independent Women "Imitating" Male Traits Was Once the Start of the Women's Movement

People always praise strength, and aggressive qualities are easily linked with success, even with freedom. Meanwhile, another "fact" runs through the long history of humankind: men are stronger than women. People grew used to it, and then came to believe it without question.

When human society began, physical strength decided the division of labor. The weak had to depend on the strong and were subordinate in society and the family. To make this arrangement more stable, the elite drew up many moral codes, so that both sides could live with a clearer conscience.

Even the two sexes' appearance had to be completely different. In the Victorian era, an English woman was to be pure and virtuous inside, with no sexual desire, and to wear a hooped skirt outside. To look beautiful, she endured the dreadful corset from childhood. Skirts existed to hide the legs; if the shape of her legs showed in the street, she could be arrested for offending public decency.

A job brought hope. At the turn of the 20th century, more women in Europe and America supported themselves in cities, and the independent modern woman appeared. Coco Chanel designed the first trousers for women: women could be not only delicate but also elegant and capable. In the Jazz Age that F. Scott Fitzgerald described, modern American women were called flappers (young birds just learning to fly). They wore the signature bob and, like men, smoked, drank, drove and enjoyed nightlife.

By 2015, the American Dialect Society named "they," a gender-neutral pronoun, its Word of the Year. At the most open schools, new students introducing themselves give not only their names but also their pronouns: "Please call me he/she/they."

In an article titled "'Tomboy' Should Be Obsolete: Who Says Girls Have to Look Like 'Girls'", The New York Times described the most fashionable view of gender: gender is not fixed. It should not be something you are born into but something you choose for yourself: "In recent years, at least in liberal descriptions, girls who like baseball or want short hair are called gender-nonconformist or transgender."

They are perfectly free to make themselves more comfortable. But something limits a girl's freedom to choose and show her gender, because before that she may first have to wage a "fight" for herself that is neither easy nor fashionable. The World Economic Forum's Global Gender Gap Report 2015 found that women's opportunities in the economic and political spheres were 59% and 23% of men's, respectively.

In this context, the gender revolution still means different things to men and women. An androgynous boy, even if he no longer carries the rigid image of the manly man, stands for rebellion against traditional society and a more varied way of life, but you probably would not think of the word "patriarchy."

An androgynous girl, as we discussed in the section on "boundary-crossing words," is taken to be more accomplished in her career and unlike the traditional virtuous wife and good mother. She is still closely tied to feminism.

Less Feminism Than a Consumer Trend: What "Gong Energy" Stands For

"Gong energy" is not quite the same as "androgynous," which rests on gender power structures. It is more like a new trend culture, eager to be consumed. If they overlap at all, it is that the "cool" in "androgynous" is lighter today than it used to be. It is a word that belongs to the young.

Producers know this well. In pop culture led by young consumers, especially young women, clever creators have long known how to strike a carefree pose while stepping carefully around the minefield of sexism.

Examples are everywhere. First, it is a real pleasure to notice how fairy tales have changed. In the past, the prince rescued the princess and they lived happily ever after. Today we have new stories like The Paper Bag Princess: the princess and the prince fall in love, a fire-breathing dragon carries the prince off, and the princess puts on a paper bag and defeats the dragon. But the prince complains that her clothes are ragged, and the princess, angry, walks away. The end.

In fashion, androgyny and the true self have been the buzzwords of the past two years. The Italian tire company Pirelli made a luxury calendar for 50 years, and for 50 years it featured nude supermodels. In 2015 it chose to show 12 fully clothed women of remarkable achievement.

On screen, gong-energy heroines keep multiplying. In July 2015, The New York Times ran "Has Feminism Conquered Hollywood?". The film critic A.O. Scott said: "Heroism used to be almost the exclusive property of white men, and now there are more female characters who truly drive the plot, whether it is the dream heroine Imperator Furiosa, the heroine of The Hunger Games, Riley, the animated girl in Inside Out, or Minnie, the protagonist of The Diary of a Teenage Girl. These characters challenge the habitual role patterns that have often distorted popular culture."

Mad Max was one of last year's coolest films, but its real hero is not a muscle man. It is the iron-willed avenger played by Charlize Theron, Imperator Furiosa. She is the first in the desert's class order to wake up and rebel, and she opens the eyes of the wives enslaved by the thugs. She has supporters on her road of resistance, too: besides Tom Hardy, who comes to admire her, there is a gang of old women on motorcycles.

After Furiosa appeared, the happiest people were women in the audience, who finally had a woman to go crazy for. Ordinary people fall for the perfect heroes of popular stories mainly because they can put themselves in their place and live an ideal, wonderful life. Because we cannot do it, our idols are so different. Because we are boring, our idols must be cool. She has become a full-blown role model for girls: even her buzz cut became one of the hottest hairstyles of 2016 (though it demands rather good looks).

Even in China, where attitudes are more conservative, change has indeed taken place.

Romantic "Mary Sue" stories have always dominated works aimed at women, but since the late 1990s the heroines have been quietly changing. In My Fair Princess, the schoolgirls of the day loved "Xiao Yanzi," a classic tomboy, more than the well-bred Ziwei. Tearful Qiong Yao dramas could no longer catch on. If Yu Zheng, "the plagiarist," succeeded, it was at least because he caught on to something new. His 2013 remake of The Smiling, Proud Wanderer, for example, made headlines by casting Ariel Lin (Chen Qiao'en) as Dongfang Bubai. It readily calls to mind the classic androgynous figure Brigitte Lin (Lin Qingxia) created in Tsui Hark's film version.

Just in the last few months, Go Princess Go became a hit. It is entirely understandable that Chinese girls love a wacky, addictive heroine like "Brother Peng." Given any smarter option, they would not cling to the word "cute."

The great disappointment of The Legend of Mi Yue has to do with this, too. People had expected director Zheng Xiaolong and lead actress Sun Li to deliver a second Empresses in the Palace: palace intrigue taken to the extreme, a woman who claws her way to the top of a patriarchal society and in the end poisons the emperor for true love, a rebel against supreme power. Sadly, the "gong energy" promised for the heroine of The Legend of Mi Yue never lived up to its name. The advertised "master strategist who unifies the six states" was a sham; all that was left was "three men love me, so whom do I love?", and even the supporting women were weaker.

"Gong Energy" Girls Are Women's New Role Models. Besides Freedom, Keeping Straight Men's Admiration Matters Too

(Pretty) gong-energy girls can often make young girls find them "manly" and make straight men find them sexy. Jennifer Lawrence, whom Chinese fans call "Big Cousin" and Forbes ranks as the world's highest-paid actress, saved the world in the youth franchise The Hunger Games, won the Oscar for Best Actress in an arthouse film, and after her nude photos were leaked said she "doesn't know what to apologize for." To Americans, she is a cool girl.

Here is a question. Both words stand for androgyny, so why do girls dislike "nü hanzi" ("manly girl") but accept "full of gong energy"?

In fact, girls as a whole reached a tacit agreement long ago. "Nü hanzi" = "woman" + "tough guy." The word is crudely built, largely to make things easy for straight men to grasp, and it arrived as the opposite label to the traditional "soft girl" and "goddess." Later it even took on an ambiguous meaning: some girls began to use it to stress that they have no scheming side, to draw a line between themselves and so-called "green tea bitches" (girls who play innocent to manipulate men).

In short, the word is too weak, and not pretty either.

"Full of gong energy" fills a gap in the language. The word is perfect, at least for now: precise, practical and considerate. It strikes a delicate balance. "Gong" comes from the vocabulary of danmei, a world led by women readers, so it was not shaped by male taste. It is more like shared knowledge among women, and it can also describe men as women see them.

When girls pick a word, they get the most out of it. Feminism and sex appeal were often forced into an either-or choice in history; now they walk peacefully hand in hand, loved by both sexes. The point is that it appeals to men and women alike. That is rare. As far as I can recall, only Sappho of ancient Greece and left-wing women intellectuals of the mid-20th century, such as Simone de Beauvoir and Susan Sontag, have enjoyed that kind of treatment.

In reality, the "gong energy" in women carries a note of compromise. In "Jennifer Lawrence and the History of the Cool Girl," BuzzFeed wrote that the cool girl has a tomboy's traits and works to keep pace with men, but keeps her "feminine qualities" and stays attractive to straight men. She manages, rarely, to be both avant-garde and backward, keeping her image smooth enough that conservatives do not find her too "heretical."

All of this suits the real needs of Chinese girls very well.

For Female Stars, Getting the Gong Label Is an "Unwritten Rule" for Winning Women Fans

Compromise makes imitation easier. Just as male stars have seized on "selling fu" (playing up boys'-love chemistry), female stars have seized on gong energy. Both help them win women fans fast, and both are carefully calculated.

People used to associate Liu Tao with Ah Zhu in Demi-Gods and Semi-Devils and with the TV drama A Good Wife. Now she is deliberately repositioning herself, stressing her "gong energy" in publicity. Last year Nirvana in Fire first wanted her for the gentle, virtuous Consort Jing, but she talked the producers into letting her play Princess Nihuang, who commands an army. In a drama dominated by men, the "gong-energy" Nihuang still won over women viewers.

Fan Bingbing's rise began even more clearly when people started calling her "Fan Ye" ("Master Fan") and she shook off her image as the maid Jinsuo. That nickname, of course, had little to do with her screen roles. It owes most to the photographer Chen Man, who created domineering fashion shoots for her, and to her efforts in interviews and reality shows to appear as independent and bold as possible.

"Full of gong energy" is sometimes real and sometimes just a way to make audiences more interested in you. The WeChat account "Serious Gossip" ran an article, "Is Fan Bingbing Really Bold or Faking It?", analyzing every domineering move she and her boyfriend Li Chen made on the talk show Kangsi Coming, such as stating her weight openly and suddenly wanting to kiss Little S. It is hard not to think she knew what "boldness" should look like and acted it out on purpose. But even if "Master Fan" thought it over many times before revealing her weight, she clearly knows how to win fans.

Another star who changed her image is Liu Yifei. Her old label was "celestial fairy." Many girls may remember this: half the boys in a middle-school class held up Liu Yifei as their ideal first love, and the girls felt about her the way Our Times jokingly mocks its hatred of Shen Chia-yi (the high-school goddess of You Are the Apple of My Eye). But now her androgynous outfits on Happy Camp, her cool, aloof look and her transformation into a "celestial-fairy gong" have turned many girls from haters into fans.

As for the boys who once had a secret crush on her, in their hearts she is still beautiful.

Finally: "Full of Gong Energy," "Fujoshi" and "Yuri"

As you might imagine, "full of gong energy" is also applied to many female couples, just as it was first applied to male couples. In fact, because "gong" comes from danmei, the people who first used it overlap heavily with fujoshi. Fujoshi are keen not only on male couples; yuri (girls' love) romances are just as popular.

These women viewers are not all gay. As ever, the reason is that freedom in real life is limited. Compared with step-by-step heterosexual dating and the marriage questions looming close at hand, the taboo-breaking world of anime and fiction naturally feels sexier: danmei, yuri, bisexual, pansexual, female-dominated worlds, NP (one with several partners), ABO and more. (If any of these terms are unfamiliar, those over 18 may search for them on their own.)

So when Zhang Tian'ai finished playing the crown princess and became the "nation's husband," women viewers not only liked watching her act out a standard domineering-CEO romance with the prince; they loved even more her yuri scenes flirting with the maid Lüli and the four consorts, and a line that has become a model pickup line: "You are spring tea, and I am water just brought to the boil. I want to steep you." Think about that absurd line. In Chinese-language stories of the past, such lines were the privilege of male leads like Stephen Chow: Chow stayed fixed, while his seductive or innocent "Stephen Chow girls" came and went.

Of course, you can also see it this way: people's feelings for fictional characters are very arbitrary. Women can treat Lu Han as a pet, a "silly roe deer," and can also treat handsome, powerful girls as stand-ins for an ideal lover. That is why gong-energy girls are common in film and TV and among entertainment stars.

Japan's Takarazuka Revue has used an all-female cast since 1914, and its most popular performers are the women who play men. A leading example is Amami Yuki, called the "Takarazuka miracle," who displayed a purely masculine handsomeness and sex appeal on a lavish, romantic stage.

Zhihu user @Onlooker Erica says: "Takarazuka's male-role actresses have a fatal attraction for women. They are women, so they understand what kind of man women need, and they are playing men, and decades of study and performance have made them more manly than men."

When Amami Yuki left Takarazuka and succeeded in television, she appeared with long hair and in skirts, but the characters she played all had great force. In last year's Fake Couple, she played a 45-year-old woman who seems dignified but secretly loathes people, yet whose inner tenderness is strong enough to save others, so much so that a single mother who had suffered domestic violence declared her love: "I can't accept men anymore. Only you."

No wonder Japanese men say: thank goodness Amami Yuki doesn't like girls, because it is really hard to be more handsome than her. (They all seem to ignore the fact that she is straight.)

Cover image sources: Douban Movies, Liu Yifei's Weibo