Gender and Success: How Gender Roles Affect the Female Protagonists of Five Star Billionaire

Gender plays a key role in the development of the characters of Five Star Billionaire. Every character is at least mildly affected by the pressure to conform to a certain gender role in order to achieve both social and economic success. For the main female characters, this pressure is mostly damaging. Yinghui and Phoebe both feel pressure to conform to feminine gender roles in their appearance, sexuality, and personality. Women in their society are forced to either perform a narrow and hyperfeminized version of their respective gender roles or face a complete severance from society which causes them to feel immense pressure to adopt an unhealthy sense of gender that is different from their natural identity. While both Phoebe and Yinghui suffer under this system, Phoebe is more harshly affected due to her lower social class while Yinghui has more freedom to commit gender transgressions without facing severe personal, financial, or social ramifications.

Phoebe’s character is the one most intensely influenced by gender roles due to her passionate desire to become successful and her relatively lower social status. From the moment she arrives in Shanghai, Phoebe begins to entirely base her own sense of self-worth on others’ perceptions of her or in the self-help books that she reads because she believes that performing femininity in a certain way is the key to becoming successful. “The first rule of success is, you must look beautiful. No one had taught Phoebe this secret, but she could tell by simple observation that successful people always looked good…Phoebe realized that the reason these women looked so beautiful was that they had good positions in life; she could not deny that the two things were inseparable. Which came first, beauty or success, she did not know” (Aw 61-2). None of this is a passive process; from this quote, the reader can see Phoebe actively constructing this hyper-feminized ideal of success and then adopting that hyper-feminized style through the counterfeit designer clothes she buys and the mannerisms she adopts because she believes that they will help her become successful. This idea is directly emphasized through her interactions with Yanyan whom she criticizes for not being feminine enough (Aw 65-6). Yanyan, whom the narrative infers is suffering from depression, is not “successful” and cannot maintain a job or really leave the apartment due to her illness. Phoebe’s criticisms of her messiness and lack of style shows the reader that she thinks femininity should be performed in certain ways and not others and is actively uncomfortable when forced to face those who commit gender transgressions (Aw 65). And yet, Yanyan is the character whom Phoebe is closest with. Phoebe is isolated in her femininity, and only makes true connections with people like Yanyan and Gary when she relies more on her true personality. These seem to be the most genuine and the least performative moments of her character arc. All of her “successful” connections with higher class people end in pain and further damage which alludes to the idea that she would be happier without performing her gender in this hyper-feminine way.

Phoebe is also forced to weaponize, or rather monetize, her sexuality in order to gain dates with men of higher social standings which she believes will help her become successful. She maintains a strict beauty regimen, way of dressing, and even a loose script for each date she goes on that is designed to make a man fall in love with the idea of her rather than who she really is (Aw 117). Phoebe quickly learns how to change the way she interacts with men online to be more desirable (Aw 116). She comments that she doesn’t need to speak that much because men only want someone to talk at not necessarily talk with. “Men do not really want to listen; they much prefer to talk. It made her job easier” (Aw 117). This pressure to perform femininity takes an emotional toll on her. By making her sexuality an economic tool in her life, Phoebe loses the essence of sexuality being for personal sexual fulfillment and passion. She divorces the sexual aspects of her own identity, and adopts a premade one that is devoid of emotion but is more marketable. Thus, the performance of her sexuality and her gender are other instances of her trying to “improve” herself while her performance is likely doing more harm.

In similar ways, Yinghui feels pressure to perform her gender in a feminine way. She faces harsh criticism from her friends and colleagues for remaining single when they repeatedly emphasize the belief that she will not be able to find a husband if she doesn’t change her appearance or start looking soon because she will be too old for them to find her attractive (Aw 51-2). This is a criticism that would never be said about a male character whose virility would diminish much slower. Despite these critiques, Yinghui chooses to maintain a shorter, less feminine haircut and a plainer wardrobe which her friends and even tabloid newspapers comment on (Aw 51-2). Yinghui has the privilege of being wealthy and successful, so she can leverage her wealth and social standing instead of her femininity. Phoebe lacks social standing and wealth, so she can only really control her sexuality and her gender performance. This class distinction affords Yinghui the space to perform her gender how she wants while Phoebe must perform it the way society has deemed it appropriate in order to survive. Even with all the strong criticism from Yinghui’s friends and the pressure she obviously feels to change her gender performance, the last comment she makes concerning this idea is this: “She really did not need a man to be successful” (Aw 53). This is one of the most basic rallying cries of modern feminism, and while it is excellent that Yinghui is able to enjoy this concept of liberation from patriarchal ideals, the same cannot be said for Phoebe who is not privileged enough to say that she can be successful without a man. In order for her to reach Yinghui’s status, she believes she must craft her gender performance to be satisfactory to the male gaze in order to reach success.

The female characters of Five Star Billionaire are clearly strongly influenced by gender roles throughout the novel. Most of the major events are a direct result of the pressures to conform to the neoliberal framework that upholds select gender roles. Both Phoebe and Yinghui feel relative amounts of pressure to maintain a feminine appearance, manner, and sexuality, but the novel interestingly contrasts their experiences to show when gender transgressions can be tolerated and when they cannot. This distinction is present in reality as well as in the novel where many who choose to perform their gender outside of their prescribed roles face discrimination and injustice. Just like the characters of Five Star Billionaire, in real life success is often tied to specific gender ideals.

Originally Written for ENG 380L: The Global Novel