Dirty dancing: Gender, aging, and sexuality during Hong Kong’s COVID-19 pandemic

Why did certain COVID-19 infections in Hong Kong attract more media scrutiny than others during the pandemic? We systematically compare media and social media responses to different clusters of infection that emerged during Hong Kong’s COVID-19 pandemic. Drawing on Susan Sontag’s (2009) essay, Illness as Metaphor, we argue that the media preoccupation with Hong Kong’s Fourth Wave COVID-19 infections was not so much concerned with the science and epidemiology of the virus, but instead resonated with deeply held anxieties about gender, aging, and sexuality in the city. Specifically, we describe how women who attended ballroom dance studios during this outbreak were targeted by mainstream and social media for transgressing traditional gender roles: abandoning their husbands and purchasing intimacy with younger and less wealthy male dance instructors. We explore the implications of this “gendering” (and its intersections with social class and ageism) for health communication and public policy in the way that it disproportionately attributed blame for the outbreak on the women and denigrated an important recreation in the city.