Rising above girls day jokes
Updated: 2016-03-14 07:33
By Raymond Zhou(China Daily)
|
|||||||||
Male members of a skiing association at Beijing's Tsinghua University hang a banner on campus to celebrate Girls Day on March 7, 2014. [Photo by Wang Zhuangfei/China Daily] |
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.
Online sources say that the trend started in 1986 at Shandong University. And 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 express young men's urge to get their "goddesses" into bed and even puns on sexual positions. OK, here is a relatively clean one, maybe fit for print in this paper: "The first time I saw your face, porn vanished from my place."
Many women were indignant, and rightly so. Yet I do not believe the guys intended sexual harassment. It could well be that they could not 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.
- Putin says Russians to start withdrawing from Syria, as peace talks resume
- Merkel says Sunday's state elections 'make her party think'
- Canberra's Balloon Spectacular festival kicks off
- Germanwings crash caused deliberately by mentally ill copilot: BEA
- Second car bomb in a month kills 34 in Turkish capital, Ankara
- German voters batter Merkel over migrant policy
- Infographics: All you need to know about Premier's press conference
- Now and then photos of Shanghai Jiaotong University
- Post-90s quits his job to make traditional paper umbrellas
- In pictures: Destroying fake and shoddy products
- Armless farmer builds new hands for himself, others
- The world in photos: March 7 - March 13
- China's booming IT industry helps drones fly high
- This 'mermaid' left broadcasting for a watery world
Most Viewed
Editor's Picks
Anti-graft campaign targets poverty relief |
Cherry blossom signal arrival of spring |
In pictures: Destroying fake and shoddy products |
China's southernmost city to plant 500,000 trees |
Cavers make rare finds in Guangxi expedition |
Cutting hair for Longtaitou Festival |
Today's Top News
What ends Jeb Bush's White House hopes
Investigation for Nicolas's campaign
Will US-ASEAN meeting be good for region?
Accentuate the positive in Sino-US relations
Dangerous games on peninsula will have no winner
National Art Museum showing 400 puppets in new exhibition
Finest Chinese porcelains expected to fetch over $28 million
Monkey portraits by Chinese ink painting masters
US Weekly
Geared to go |
The place to be |