Two-Way Mechanism Driving Appearance Anxiety: An Analysis of Xiaohongshu’s Beauty Discourse Among Female College Students

Abstract

Amid the deep integration of the "she-conomy" and social media, Xiaohongshu has become a primary channel for female college students to access beauty and skincare information. However, the underlying mechanism linking the platform's dissemination of "ideal appearance standards" to appearance anxiety among this demographic remains under-explored, with existing research suffering from limitations such as one-dimensional analysis and insufficient contextualization.This study employs a mixed-methods approach—including questionnaires, interviews, discourse analysis, and web scraping—with national female college students as subjects. Grounded in emotional labor theory, it constructs an "emotional labor bidirectional cycle" analytical framework. From dual perspectives of media content production and audience feedback, it reveals the internal mechanisms through which Xiaohongshu's beauty and skincare discourse shapes female college students' appearance anxiety.Findings reveal that Xiaohongshu's beauty discourse: - Reconstructs cognition through "constructing appearance flaws + implanting ideal standards"; - Generates emotions via "upward comparison + practical effect gap"; - Reinforces behavior by "anxiety-driven content dependency and consumption"; forming a vicious cycle of "anxiety confirmation-generation-reinforcement." The platform's discourse strategies synergize with algorithmic recommendations to construct an "anxiety-consumption" closed loop, further amplifying anxiety exposure.