The #brandygirls trend is a Critique on the Paradoxical Chinese Society
Founded in 1970, Brandy Melville is a European clothing and fashion accessories brand that features the concept of “an attainable aspiration”: something youthful and desirable, but at the same time affordable and down-to-earth. The brand does not use professional models or advertising; instead, they rely on pretty, long-legged, skinny influencers posting pictures of themselves wearing the clothes on Instagram to attract customers. The “attainable” concept is also featured in its signature marketing strategy “one size fits all.” Compared to similar brands like GAP, Forever 21, and Hollister, the huge success of Brandy Melville can be attributed to its highly localized marketing strategies that are based on a thorough understanding of the Chinese marketplace, customers, and culture. By defying almost every convention of market entry, the teen brand was able to garner cult status among the “BM girls” rapidly through methods such as the use of an ideal feminist motto “liberalization” for females from conventional dress code, the exploitation of a sense of superiority from the on-size-policy, and the Chinese’s unconscious desire to judge others dating back to the history. While there are now rising controversies about the brand’s reinforcement of unrealistic beauty standards, Brandy Melville’s growing market presence is somewhat a reflection of the flawed Chinese society’s inherently conflicting agenda for eliminating body shame and the impulse to objectify women through standardized aesthetic criteria.
With the ground opening of Brandy Melville’s first retail store in Los Angeles in 2009, the brand has been favored by teenage girls in the United States mainly due to its ability to perfectly satisfy their target audiences’ three main desires: trends, affordability, and exclusiveness. A spectacular selection of crop tops, miniskirts, and minidresses may be found in a BM store with the main color palette of muted colors like cream, dusty blue, dustier rose, and maroon. The clothes are designed targeting Malibu-based girls, the prices are reasonable, and the aesthetics capture what is one trend. In other words, the branding plays on the exclusivity of size-zero and feeling special for being part of a “skinny, pretty girls” club even though all teens know that this is rather unfair. Despite the boom, the brand has also received criticism on various social platforms. Blogger Laura Zaneuth writes, “The last thing women need is another company creating low self-esteem and body image issues.” This quote shows that, unlike in China, even in a country where the female body has more freedom the one-size clothes can be misleading to younger generations in slim dominance by developing a hegemonic ideal of slenderness.
Brandy Melville first became viral in China in 2019 with the credit of “liberating female fashion.” The feminist motto was not what the brand had used for marketing and promotion in the United States, but it was what has led BM to outshine other fast fashion brands when entering the Chinese market. Unlike in the U.S. where girls feel confident in wearing clothes that they like without having to worry about body size and overexposure of skin, fashion for girls in China is about looking good by hiding their body “flaws” and minimizing skin exposure. This is mainly because bounded by morals of faith and sometimes religion, the main goal of Chinese girls’ dressing code is to avoid drawing attention and avoid inspiring sexual attraction. When I say that Asian women often feel forced by society to avoid wearing showy clothes, I do not mean that there has been no improvement to the conservative nature of fashion norms even today. However, with showing off large skin areas or one’s sensitive areas still perceived to be indecent in Asian cultures, the increased appearance of crop tops and short dresses was seen as a huge step forward in Chinese female fashion. Brandy Melville was able to reduce girls’ constant worry about appearing fat so that they could begin to feel comfortable showing off their bodies, liberating fashion for girls in China. Such a phenomenon is vital to consider because it meant that the Chinese market was finally ready for a change in stand for female dress code with a departure from humility, and Brandy Melville was the first brand that succeeded in doing so in society as old-fashioned as the Chinese society.
However, with Brandy Melville’s rising popularity, there are also increasing criticisms for the brand’s reinforcement of unrealistic beauty standards due to its “One Size” policy. BM identifies the “size zero” as the ideal body type, limiting the perfect body shape to a small one size, thanks to the bad influence that its propaganda concept brings to society. This is essentially exploitation of the superiority feeling that one gains from being able to fit into brandy clothes by satisfying the targeted consumers’ self-conceit; the popularity of the brand worldwide is the perfect proof of all humans’ intrinsic craving for the feeling of being superior, regardless of race or cultural setting. This pattern has formulated a cult status in which girls with a BM label are corresponding to a higher aesthetical prestige, resulting in more followers and complements on social platforms. Only famous online influencers with milky skin and long legs are qualified to work at the store and they present as role models for their young fans. With beauty being the key stepping stone to success in the Chinese market, Brandy Melville is in essence building their loyal community and the exclusive “BM culture” by providing younger generations with an excuse to admire the twisted epitome of the female body as being skinny and incompatible.
On the other hand, I do not mean that this is a failure in the marketing strategy to gain larger shares in China since the policy has actually caused the brand to thrive even further in a highly judgmental society. For instance, users on Xiaohongshu (Little Red Book), one of China’s most honored online social shopping platform, has even created a BM sizing chart with the exact weight and height that a girl is expected to be in order to be qualified to wear BM clothing and to be considered a member of the “club.” The height of 5’2 inches, the average height for women in China (according to WorldData.Info), corresponds to a weight as low as 94 lbs. In other words, the fact that Brandy Melville continues to receive mass attention from the media reflects that China is, perhaps, one of the most likely countries to consider body weight and shape as significant qualities for determining women’s beauty with thinness seen as a desirable body type by the general public. While other brands compete for market shares with Brandy Melville by embracing diversity in their branding image, BM’s contentious yet distinctive marketing strategy in building slim supremacy in Chinese beauty standards has been victorious and so far profitable.
In a nutshell, I ascribe the successful market entry of Brandy Melville in China to its focused and specialized marketing methods by fully exploiting the Chinese culture and market that relies on the feeling of superiority, the wish for more freedom in dress norms, and the conflicting desire that lurks within the Chinese society since history to judge and comment on women. Brandy Melville is accused of the advocation in one specific body shape, and this acme yet unrealistic beauty promoted by the company has imposed negative consequences on society like body shaming, insecurities in the perception of one’s own unattractiveness, and most importantly the public’s definition of what female beauty is. There is still a long way to go in China to tackle BM and the society’s aesthetic’s pressure on women, but, on the bright side, there has been growing discussion about body positivity on social media with an increasing number of people urging women to love their own bodies and rejecting unhealthy beauty ideals.
Citations
https://www.sixthtone.com/news/1006323/how-china-became-a-nation-of-%23brandygirls
https://daoinsights.com/works/brandy-melvilles-one-size-policy-inspires-new-bm-style-in-china/
