Papers presented by Yong Yen Nie since 2019
2025 Atlanta, Georgia
"The Singapore Girl: Idealizations of Work and National Identity in Postcolonial Singapore, 1970s–2000s"
Yen Nie Yong, Kyoto University
Abstract:
Studies on gendered business practices in the European and American airline companies have made significant contributions in theorizing discriminatory character of organizations Nevertheless, less understood is how discriminative practices and employees’ emotional labor are socially produced through the Western male gaze on Asian female workers, and became part of national identities in former colonies. This study examines the historical processes in constructing and managing The Singapore Girl, a marketing slogan to depict Singapore Airlines’ (SIA) female cabin crew from the nation’s decolonization period in the 1970s to 2000s. In 1972, the Singapore Girl was created to stir the imagination of its customers about the young airline’s in-flight hospitality, but has since evolved to become a national cultural icon. Her narrative was tightly controlled by both foreign and local men in the advertising, airline, and fashion industries. It is mainly communicated through visual elements, namely a tight-fitting sarong kebaya—a traditional costume in floral print designed by French designer Pierre Balmain, and demure smiles captured in soft-focus photography on advertising campaigns. These elements romanticized emotional labor by characterizing the female cabin crew as naturally warm, gentle, and willing to please, and mirrored the stereotypical depictions of indigenous communities by British colonial administrators in Malaya and Singapore. Despite repeated criticism of sexism in its marketing strategy, SIA retains much of its discriminatory practices by selecting only young, slim, and attractive females to be interviewed for the Singapore Girl positions. I argue the state-business nexus played a key role in perpetuating the idealization of the Singapore Girl not only as part of SIA’s organizational culture, but also as the nation’s work culture amidst the country’s rapid industrialization. Through national productivity movements from the 1970s to the 1990s, the Singapore Girl retained much of its essence, by embodying the state’s perceived ideal work values via her traits of subservience, obedience, and diligence.
2022 Mexico City
"From Craft to Industry and Back: Malaya’s Role in Maintaining Tin’s Relevance to Early Industrialization (1930s–1960s)"
Yen Nie Yong, Kyoto University
Abstract:
Amid technological change and discoveries of alternative materials, how did some commodities stay relevant? Through a microhistory of the tin industry of Malaya—a British colony, this paper highlights a less-discussed strategy that commodity-producing colonies utilized to fend off competition from substitutes amid global economic and geopolitical transitions. Existing literature has shown the role of tin cartels in controlling production and price. However, from the inter-war years, Malayan tin producers faced competition from aluminium, chromium, and paper packaging as substitutes for food canning. The US—the world’s largest buyer of tin—was the most driven among industrialized nations in pioneering technological shifts and discoveries in alternative materials to reduce dependency on tin and to a larger extent, the British Empire which controlled global tin production via its colonies. As the world’s leading tin producer, the Malayan colonial government joined with tin mining companies to form the Malayan Tin Bureau based in Washington D.C. As a lobbyist and public relations organization, the Malayan Tin Bureau worked to create new cultural meanings around the metal. Through advertisements, publicity campaigns, and industrial research, the Bureau communicated a singular message to American government officials and industrialists that there was simply no substitute for tin. By the mid-20th century, however, as the British Empire and industrialists gradually accepted that tin was no longer the industrial darling, British institutions and Malayan manufacturers shifted their strategy to pewter. An alloy made of over 90 percent tin, pewter was marketed as a ‘beautiful metal’ synonymous with high British culture. Their efforts to elevate the status of pewter to that of silver created new pathways for tin to be relevant in the growing mass retail consumption through art, interior design items, gifts, and jewellery in the post-colonial era.