In May 2018, I attended a meeting with directors of an online variety show that will be broadcast in the second half of the year. The director team revealed that the key to the success or failure of the show is whether it can stimulate the audience's discussion, and gender issues, especially women's topics, are the topics that attract the most attention or even the most can cause quarrels, and they hope that I will join the show as a screenwriter of gender issues or KOLs, because I happen to have written some articles on women's issues, one of which "In such an unequal society, how can there be equal marriage" get some attention.
Yes, on today's social networks, the issue of women is overwhelming. Whether it is online variety shows or WeChat self-media, they are trying to output values for female audiences. Among them, Ayawawa, whose original name was Yang Bingyang, is very representative. After graduating from college, she became a journalist and later an emotional columnist, and her marriage books have been at the top of the best-seller list for many years.
Ayawawa Yang Bingyang. Visual China Infographic
In the past five years, Ayawawa (Yang Bingyang) has become more and more accurate to grasp the anxiety of women who hate to marry or want to save their marriages, and her remarks have successfully gained the attention of more than 3 million Weibo fans, and her WeChat self-media also claims to have 1 million fans. Open her WeChat public account, which is updated every day, in a push called "Doll Micro Q&A", full of such questions: "Doll sister, will he propose to me?" Do you want to keep going? "What should I do to make him willing to pay for my preferences?" "How do I get my boyfriend to write my name on the house?"
Chinese Edition of the Precepts and Precepts 2
Emotion experts like Ayawawa can also find some benchmarks in Western countries, and in the United States, for example, the masterpiece of the "Happiness Self-Help Movement" is the 1995 bestseller "The Rules: Time-tested Secrets for Capturing the Heart of Mr. Right", which has been translated into Chinese editions of "Commandments" and "Commandments 2". The rules in the book are clear and clear: women should not initiate dating, do not want AA system, do not always want to change each other, have their own lives, marriage does not mean that there is no secret between you from now on, etc...
Interestingly, the Chinese version of the Precepts was recommended by Yang Bingyang, who wrote in her recommendation: "I have recommended this Precept no less than a hundred times on different occasions, on different platforms, and to different people. If you follow the precepts, you will have a happy marriage, and the girls who do not follow the precepts will always be alone. Ayawawa, in her 2015 book Don't Take Men as Improper Animals, also drew on the issues of the Precepts, talking about how to skillfully respond to practical issues such as the man's sexual demands, declaring that women should not miss the golden period of love, and what are the risks of sister-brother love...
Ayawawa is proficient in marketing and has worked tirelessly, not only borrowing from the American Precepts, but also reinventing some emotion theories in conjunction with Evolutionary Psychology. In her book, she goes out of her way to emphasize that women should make men feel safe and unsurpassed by dressing conservatively, that is, not to let them worry that their offspring are not their own (term: lowering the PU, where she actually quotes the concept of paternity uncertainty in Evolutionary Psychology). For example, she also stressed that women should not be handsome men in the marriage market, because such men tend to be more careful and reluctant to invest in women and their descendants. She encourages women to find men who are willing to buy them a house, add a name to their real estate deeds, and are willing to spend money on them, even if they are ugly.
Her views and theories are simple and clear. The reason she became popular is precisely because they responded simply and clearly (and may not really solve) the insecurities and anxieties that many women encounter in their lives. In order to answer fans' questions, Ayawawa can give very clear answers every time, such as "You want to enhance the value of personal marriage." "Your parent-child uncertainty is too high." "Grasp the financial power." "You climb the boyfriend, and the high climb will swallow the needle."
It is conceivable that the Precepts have been insulted by anti-feminism in the United States, and that Feminists in China are not welcoming Ayawawa. This is, of course, because she advocates that women should not care about structural inequality between men and women, but should pursue the maximization of their own material interests in the existing structure — feminists who are inclined to innovation will of course hate this conservatism, and they do not want to see women obsessed with small favors in the private sphere, and give up the pursuit of careers, the pursuit of ideals, and the construction of a strong and independent heart.
People's Park Blind Date Corner. Visual China Infographic
Ayawawa is still more influential in China than the Precepts from New York. This is partly because the utilitarian nature of Chinese marriage culture was pinpointed by Ayawawa, whose theories were modified according to the reality of marriage in China. There is a saying that Chinese marriage has never emphasized romantic love. Anthropologist Fei Xiaotong has compared the differences between Chinese and Western families. He said that in Western families, couples are the main axis, jointly running fertility affairs, and children are supporting roles, because they leave the group when they grow up, so the feelings of husband and wife are an important force for condensing the whole family. The Chinese family is a career-oriented organization, the main axis is the father-son and the mother-in-law, which is the vertical relationship, and the horizontal husband and wife relationship is only the matching axis. This kind of career organization naturally rejects emotional attributes, but emphasizes responsibility and obedience.
Ayawawa's emphasis on the utilitarian nature of marriage also corresponds to the excessive multi-functional nature of marriage in China today. Why? In Western society, political, economic, and religious functions are performed by other groups, not by the family. However, in today's China, especially after the reform and opening up, the state has almost completely shifted the functions of old-age care and child-rearing from the units and the state in the socialist period to the family, and the obligations of raising children and supporting the elderly within the family are often mostly borne by women. This is also one of the important reasons why Chinese women generally believe in neoliberalism and individual utilitarianism. Women with few social resources and low social structural positions have to expect a materially strong marriage. This kind of utilitarian marriage can support them like a safety net, and the romantic emotional factor has taken a back seat in the choice of marriage and love, at the same time, people are further concerned only with their own private affairs, and there is a lack of interest in public issues such as social equality and virtue building in the public sphere.
It is in this era that the three views of Chinese women maintain a mixture of pre-modern, modern, and post-modern currents. In other words, the complexity of contemporary Chinese society is vividly expressed in the interpretation of women's stories. Ayawawa's fans represent the kind of women's stories that may represent a traditional conservative value of marriage and love, but there is also a modern or even postmodern value of marriage and love and the image of women that are welcomed by feminists. The idea of this part of the people was projected on a girl named Wang Ju in the recent network girl group program Creation 101. This post-90s girl has successfully attracted a large number of fans because she clearly expresses her ambitions and desires.
The idea of this part of the people was projected on a girl named Wang Ju in the recent network girl group program Creation 101.
Although the show purchased the rights of the Korean girl group, it has obviously been improved by the Chinese version. In the selection of the Chinese version, the members of the female group did not present the korean version of the same delicate and cute straight male aesthetic, but had a more diversified female image. Taking Wang Ju as an example, in the sixth program, the program team specially made memes for her, retained the dialogue between Ma Dong's master class and Wang Ju, and also designed a confession of female independence spirit that resonated with everyone by exposing her old photos, Wang Ju said in her confession that although she became black and fat because of hormones, she fell in love with herself now and did not want to return to the white and thin past.
Wang Ju emoji
My small survey in the circle of friends found that Wang Ju is often liked by women with good education level, living in first- and second-tier cities, and usually understanding British and American pop culture. Some fans of Wang Ju said that the main reason for being moved by Wang Ju is that she dares to say no to the mainstream aesthetic system and dares to challenge authority, which is a very important spiritual encouragement for them. "Her attitude is perfectly in line with the independent feminine spirit they pursue."
Zheng Xiaodong, the operation editor of a technology media Aifaner, said, "Why should you support Wang Ju's debut? Because I hope that one day your daughter will point to Wang Ju on TV and say, I want to be as independent as her, instead of pointing to the cookie-cutter packaged girl group on TV and saying, I also want to have the same nose as her. By voting for Wang Ju, these fans hope to participate in reshaping China's female idols, and in the process, they also feel self-empowerment, so they frantically vote for her, hoping to help her squeeze into the mainstream market, and even set a good example for their children.
Perhaps it can be said that people who hate Ayawawa are pleasantly surprised to find Wang Ju, who has become an outlet for their modern and even postmodern value expression: they no longer want to live in the expectations of white and thin children in mainstream patriarchal society, they do not want to be gentle and obedient but can be as intimidating and rolling their eyes at will, they want to say goodbye to the traditional image of "good woman", and they will never ask the emotional experts: "How to get my boyfriend to write my name on the house?" Wang Ju expressed their voice: "I can buy myself a diamond ring"...
The girls who follow Ayawawa and those who like Wang Ju may mark two extremes of the spectrum of female beings in China today, which is also a testament to the complexity of contemporary China. The girls had a hard time talking to each other, or even completely unable to understand each other. Today, telling the story of any group of women seems to be very worried about its representation, because this is a Pre-modern, modern and post-modern women's currents coexist in China, and the female group also contains the strongest energy to change themselves and change society.