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 and the Chinese translation for women here is a very formal word that emphasizes the status of marriage.

With such linguistic baggage, no wonder it has seen a rival in the form of parody. Women 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.