Rising above Girls Day jokes

The sexist messages have angered many but the real culprit is pop culture that scorns women who make unconventional choices and stigmatizes them as an appendage of wealth and status

March 8 as International Women's Day is facing a unique hurdle: Its Chinese acronym, sanba, is a homonym for a busybody, while the Chinese translation for women is a formal word that emphasizes the status of marriage.

With such linguistic baggage, no wonder it has seen a rival in the form of parody. Female students in China increasingly celebrate March 7 as Girls Day. As the joke goes, it takes just one day for a girl to become a woman.

Online sources say the trend started in 1986 at Shandong University in eastern China. One of the main activities, it seems, is male students hanging out giant banners extolling their female peers.

This year, Girls Day caught public attention when some of the campus slogans crossed over from humor and fun to outright obnoxiousness. There were various couplets that expressed young men's urges to get their "goddesses" into bed, and even some puns on sexual positions.

Here is a relatively clean one: "The first time I saw your face, porn vanished from my place."

Many women were indignant, and rightly so. Yet I don't believe the guys intended any sexual harassment. It may well be that they cannot distinguish between a good joke and a dirty one, and instead saw the occasion as a kitchen sink where they could pour out anything from their libido-heavy minds.

Humor may be a human instinct, but expressing it appropriately does not come naturally to everyone. It's an ability that taps into both in-born genius and well-honed craft.

Call it etiquette or political correctness, but one must not forget that there are invisible lines when making jokes related to gender or race. As a rule of thumb, one should not mock the institutionally weak.

Zhao Benshan, a top comedian in China, was once lambasted for gags mocking the handicapped.

The funny thing is, we're living in a storm of rapid changes. Female enrollment in college has risen so fast, and women are so academically competitive that guys could well feel threatened. There are unwritten rules in recruitment or employment to favor males because they are weak. I've heard of more than one employer that lowers the cutoff line by 20 or 30 points (out of 100) for male applicants.

If you dissect the tongue-in-cheek couplets, they actually assumed a lower status for men. They were pleading with the "girls" who would otherwise go for greener pastures. Let me put it this way: The slogans would have been unthinkable two centuries ago when women were socially designated as adjunct to men.

But does the appearance of the bad jokes imply women have equality in China? By no means. Old traditions die hard. Simply declaring women equal does not turn it into an instant reality. But I dare say Chinese women may have moved further than their Western peers in some respects.

In China, when a supervisor or a CEO is a woman, it's generally taken for granted. If people hate her, rarely will they say, "She's a woman." I consider that progress because we have passed the stage when female executives are used as tokens for equality.

More harmful than the college jokes is the popularity of costume dramas devoured by even the fairer sex. For example, a typical on-screen tale of palace intrigue would have a phalanx of beautiful young women outwitting and killing each other so the last one standing would get the emperor's favor. Where was Empress Wu Zetian when we needed her?

Now, I'm no feminist (by somewhat justifying the campus pranksters I could have offended the nation's feminists), but I think the subliminal message of so much of today's pop culture condemns women to second class - but subtly, so that even women seem to be floating on cloud nine after wallowing in it.

Take this Tmall billboard tagline: "It's higher praise to say a woman is a better shopper than a better earner." The implication is that a woman appears smarter if she can use men's money for shopping rather than toiling for her own pay.

As a variation of a much more accepted and colloquial set phrase - "A good husband would get you farther than a good job" - it drums home the importance of finding a wealthy guy. I understand there have always been women who truly abide by this principle, and I would not judge them. But I feel sad that women with career goals are turned into targets of running gags.

Now that gold-diggers are made into the envy of young girls, shouldn't we reserve some respect for women who want to be seen as independently successful? This brings us to "leftover women", a term that applies to many career women. It is couched in facetiousness and adds a tinge of self-deprecation when used by women themselves. But it conveys society's unease with the rise of a growing demographic that refuses to be dictated to by Confucian dogma.

We used to put labels on women; for example, one who stays at home and raises children is "traditional" and one who works until 9 pm is "modern". For me there is no right and wrong. If it's a choice from the heart, it's the right one - bringing up three kids or staying single or juggling domestic and professional duties.

If a woman is not part of your family, you don't have the right to judge her. If she is, it should be a decision collectively made by the whole family.

On a recent trip to a park, my 10-year-old daughter noticed many public statues were female nudes. She asked why, and I replied, "They were commissioned by men." However, if you watch soap operas, the parade of gorgeous young men being "objectified" - to borrow an academic word - has just started. That's women wielding their purchasing power.

Sometime in the future, sociologists will have a field day poring over this Girls Day's verbal buffoonery.

Contact the writer at raymondzhou@chinadaily.com.cn

Banner culture

Hanging banners is part of everyday culture in China. It is unclear when the practice started, but today banners strung along roadsides, street railings and even hanging from college campus dormitory windows can be seen nationwide.

These banners can range from official warnings for drivers and pedestrians, advertisements for businesses, government announcements or reminders of civil values, or informal slogans written by individuals to celebrate or mark a special occasion, such as the annual Girls Day.

- Li Jing

(China Daily European Weekly 03/18/2016 page22)