“Desiring a puppy-like lover”: older women and younger men romantic TV dramas and Chinese postfeminism

Older Women and Younger Men Romantic TV dramas, which center on the love story between an older woman and her younger lover, have emerged as a popular television genre in China in recent years. Using textual analysis as its methodology, this article examines two examples of this genre—Falling into You (2022) and Love the Way You Are (2022)—focusing on three key aspects of these dramas: their potential redirection of heterosexual women viewers' ambitions for career success toward desires for heterosexual romance, their celebration of women's sexual agency within the framework of chaste heterosexual love, and their incorporation of individualist, collectivist, and nationalist ideologies. The article argues that these dramas are exemplary of Chinese postfeminism, which intertwines progressive and regressive elements and both shares similarities with and diverges from its Western counterpart due to the influence of Chinese reality and history. Based on this discussion, the article aims to illustrate the recent characteristics of Chinese postfeminist media, particularly its tendency to cloak regressive elements in progressive claims, as well as the "nuanced interconnections" between Chinese and Western postfeminism.