ABSTRACT
Drawing on in-depth ethnographic research on relationship counselling in contemporary China, this chapter illustrates the ways in which relationship experts merge ideas drawn from sociobiology with the cultural matrix of the market to orient women towards the self, provide them with strategies of action and shape new subjectivities in intimate romantic relationships. Insisting on a successology rhetoric that encourages women to solve their problems through self-remaking, the chapter shows how the (in)famous relationship expert Ayawawa quantifies and commodifies women’s attractiveness, naturalizes women’s emotional work, encourages cosmetic surgery and justifies all these with scientific authority and neoliberal rationality.
