From Intimacy to Extimacy
This article examines Taylor Swift’s announcement of her engagement in 2025 as an extimate event that rendered visible the emerging tensions in how young women in China imagine and increasingly refuse marriage today. Once circulating in Chinese popular discourse as a loosely feminist icon who has a...
Enregistré dans:
| Auteur principal: | |
|---|---|
| Format: | Article ou chapitre numérique |
| Langue: | Français |
| Publié: |
2026
|
| Sujets: | |
| Accès en ligne: | Accès Université d'Orléans et IFPM Accès Université d'Orléans et IFPM |
| Résumé: | This article examines Taylor Swift’s announcement of her engagement in 2025 as an extimate event that rendered visible the emerging tensions in how young women in China imagine and increasingly refuse marriage today. Once circulating in Chinese popular discourse as a loosely feminist icon who has a successful career being unmarried and childless, Swift’s highly mediated celebration of engagement provoked ambivalent responses on Chinese social media, from disappointment to even a sense of betrayal. Drawing on Lacan’s concept of extimacy, I argue that the event’s emotional reception among the public cannot be simply understood as parasocial disillusionment. Rather, it represents a fissure in the fantasy through which global celebrity intimacies are consumed and internalized. In contrast to the prevalent discourse of singlehood and marital fatigue publicly shared by Chinese female celebrities, Swift’s engagement reactivates the normative pressure that many Chinese women seek to refuse. By reading this moment at the intersection of transnational celebrity culture and local refusal, this case study shows how public performances of intimacy become politically meaningful across cultural contexts, informing how women perceive and discuss marriage today. |
|---|