C-Pop Girls

© Giulia Piermartiri + Edoardo Delille

In the heart of China's crowded metropolises, a generation of young women is growing up with a different world consciousness.
Defying social expectations, these 20-year-old girls embody the change taking place in the Asian country.
Immersed in whimsical C-Pop music, they are a perfect fusion of tradition and modernity, with a rhythm that blends elements of Chinese popular culture with international influences.
On the streets of Chongqing, the largest and most unknown city in the world - few people have heard of it, but it has 32 million inhabitants - Giulia Piermartiri + Edoardo Delille took a series of portraits of young Generation Z women.

Brought up in a historically oppressive society, Chinese women have lived under the shadow of a rigid patriarchal order that has imprisoned women in submissive, hard-working roles.
Mao Zedong, during the 1950s, paved the way for women's emancipation.
'Women hold up half the sky' was the motto of the Chinese Communist Party, which recognised the revolutionary role they played in the liberation of China. However, with the rise of Xi Jinping, the male leadership has veered towards a more traditionalist view of the family, insisting on the role of mothers and wives.

The new generation we have portrayed has the ambition to conquer a different role from the one traditionally assigned to women by society.

The significant social, technological and economic transformations in which these young girls grew up have generated women with a unique and independent identity. In recent years, it is increasingly common that many famous Western fashion brands have chosen these young emancipated Chinese women as ambassadors not only for their consumer power but for their influence on the market.

The extravagant clothes inspired by Japanese manga, the bright colours of the kawaii aesthetic and the eccentric accessories are a declaration of independence.
Coloured hair, contact lenses, piercings and androgynous bodies challenge the norms and expectations of a country in a time of great change.
The desire for personal fulfilment beyond the family, pursuing professional and artistic careers, the expressive freedom of the C-Pop phenomenon and the first hints of emancipation regarding sexual identity, reflect the growing influence of these young women on the major transformations taking place in Chinese society.

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We have quotes to accompany the portraits