Min Zhou

This article examines how Xiaohongshu, a fashion- and lifestyle-orientated online social commerce platform with a predominantly female user base (70%), simultaneously challenges and reinforces conventional beauty standards. While users are positioned within the discourse of ‘she power’, the platform’s framing of empowerment remains deeply contradictory. Drawing on six months of online ethnography and in-depth interviews, this article explores how Xiaohongshu constructs and commercialises stylised femininity as a form of spectacle. Analysing aesthetic practices through three dimensions – norms, dual gazes and resistance – the findings reveal that user engagement (e.g. likes, comments, shares) drives algorithmic learning. This process transforms beauty pressures into data, reinforcing platform-defined ideals while promoting ‘relatable’ influencers who mirror everyday users. Such dynamics offer surface-level relief from beauty norms yet deepen entrenchment in consumerist algorithmic culture. The article extends Guy Debord’s theory of the spectacle by demonstrating how platform participation sustains aesthetic standards through interactive visibility. It also contributes to scholarship on gendered platform economies by uncovering the socio-technical mechanisms shaping women’s engagement with digital beauty cultures. As the data primarily reflect urban, youth-orientated experiences, future research should investigate non-urban and cross-platform variations.

Background Intensive care is essential for critically ill patients who experience loss of personal identity and restricted physical and emotional expression. However, patient privacy in Intensive Care Units (ICUs) remains inadequately protected, with both patients and healthcare professionals (HCPs) reporting breaches. Cultural backgrounds and individual perspectives of patients and HCPs significantly shape their views on privacy. In China, discourse on ICU patient privacy is still in its early stages. Research aim This study aims to explore the experiences of HCPs and patients regarding the patient privacy in ICU under the Chinese background. Research design A qualitative study was conducted using purposive sampling methods for semi-structured, face-to-face, in-depth interviews, followed by thematic analysis to identify key themes. Participants and research context Six focus-group interviews (with a total of 33 nurses) were conducted, while seven doctors and 10 patients were interviewed individually from March to July 2024 at a tertiary hospital in China. Ethical considerations This study was approved by the hospital’s Ethics Committee (reference number: 2024-L-158). Informed consent was obtained from all participants, and data confidentiality was ensured through anonymization and encrypted storage. Findings Four themes were identified: (1) the coexistence of consensus and disagreement regarding privacy scope; (2) the paradoxical perception of privacy protection; (3) conflicting responses to privacy violation and (4) much has been done, but more is needed. Conclusions Minimizing exposure of ICU patients’ private areas and protecting their information are essential to safeguarding privacy. Education and training in bioethics can enhance HCPs’ sensitivity to ethical issues and improve practices regarding privacy protection. Teaching resilience and stress management can help mitigate psychological distress associated with privacy violations in ICU patients. Additionally, promoting HCPs’ privacy awareness, limiting visits by opposite-sex family members, and enhancing HCPs’ empathy are key strategies in this context.

The existing literature has well studied the use of social contacts in job search, including gender inequality, in using social contacts. What is missing is the perspective of social contacts who help others find jobs. Using a large data set from the 2012 China Labor-Force Dynamics Survey, this study reveals significant gender differences in the provision of job-search help. Compared with women, men are more likely to provide job-search help and especially show a greater likelihood of exerting direct influence on the hiring process. While women are gender neutral in their choice of help recipients, men display a selective preference for helping other men. This men’s advantage of providing job-search help, especially influence-based help, and men’s selective preference for helping other men, imply another prominent gender inequality in informal hiring in the labor market. This study suggests several theoretical propositions to explain the revealed gender differences in both “whether to help” and “whom to help,” providing a starting point for further research.