Animals and Beauties: Zoomorphic Inscriptions of a Modern Gender Hierarchy

At the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, along with myriad other foundational changes taking place in China, attitudes to the role and significance of women and animals were also changing. This evolution is apparent in the artistic realm where both had featured in imperial-era Chinese art for centuries and continued to appear in the new Republic after 1911. This article examines animals and their paired depiction with women within one genre of art – the Baimei tu (One hundred beauties) – as it evolved from the late 1800s until the end of the 1910s. An examination of the works of leading commercial artists of this form reveals the importance of animals in the creation of a gendered modernity for China’s Republic – one that established a clear hierarchy of men over women. This article argues that the species-ist othering of animals was integral to the othering of women in the early Republican world of commercial art. It contributes to the literature on human-animal studies that shows the links between species-ism and sexism through the identical processes of variously othering animals and women. Identifying animals and women as special and different, reinforces a species hierarchy that places humans above other animals and a sex hierarchy that places men above women.