How do concepts of performativity help me to understand my embodiment of feminine beauty? This journal reveals how I as a beauty editor of a HK traditional press survives in the ‘liberal’ industry.

Imagining we all live in an illness narrative as Jackie Stacey asserts, those who write them offer recognisable narratives of diagnosis and treatment; those who read them often do so in search of the comforting hope of survival. Performing both as a producer and audience of beauty contents, I always self-diagnose and suffer from abjection because I have no way to register the ‘failure’ of my sensitive skin.

However, instead of the poor condition of my skin, it is ‘what disrupts my identity’ causing this kind of abjection. There is something under my skin that betrays me, disrupting the border of my biology and culture.

Available for pre-order. It will be delivered in May.