The "realistic version of Fan Shengmei" is probably one of the most concerned public events in the past two days.
On Weibo, "realistic version of Fan Shengmei", "Lolo's Weibo", "What should the elders do when they prefer sons to daughters"... One by one, the hot search topics that seem to be unrelated all point to the same young white-collar girl who unfortunately passed away, "Lolo". The reason why this matter has attracted much attention lies in the suspected parents' demand for Luoluo revealed in the girl's Weibo before her death, and also lies in the claims of Luoluo's parents against Luoluo's inaugural company.
Many people have watched the hit drama "Ode to Joy" and have a deep memory of the role of Fan Shengmei: she is a senior HR of a foreign-funded company, grew up in a poor family that favors sons over daughters, the injustice of her parents makes her grumpy, and after work, she is repeatedly dragged down by her brother, and the money earned fills the bottomless pit of the family... This can't help but remind people of a super bestseller book that swept all over Korea, "Kim Ji-young, born in 1982". The book tells the story of a 36-year-old Korean ordinary woman Kim Ji-young in the first half of her life, and keywords such as "son preference", "native family" and "women's rights" are all reflected on Kim Ji-young. After the novel was published, it was also adapted into a movie of the same name, and the women who watched in the theater were poked in the center knot and shed tears of resonance.
Indeed, what Jin Zhiying narrates, what Jin Zhiying feels, and what Jin Zhiying is confused about is exactly what every girl who has been frustrated by gender has experienced, felt and confused. Therefore, Jin Zhiying may become you, become me, become us.
▲ Fan Shengmei in the TV series "Ode to Joy"
"How many invisible ups and downs does a girl have to go through to stumble and grow into adulthood." This sentence on the waist seal of "Jin Zhiying born in 82" has poked the hearts of countless women.
Kim Ji-young is one of the most common names among Korean-born women in 1982. Kim Ji-young, the heroine of "Kim Ji-young born in 1982", what is special about her? The answer is that there is nothing special about it. But the author, the South Korean writer Cho Nam-joo, opened up a different path. Not writing about the most special, but the most common, she portrays the countless daily lives of a Korean woman today with condensed brushstrokes. However, behind these well-behaved and step-by-step lives, there are countless moments of difficulty and collapse as a woman.
Kim's father was a civil servant and his mother was a housewife. She had her sister, who was two years older than her, and a brother who was five years younger than her below. Their three siblings, their parents and grandmother, and a family of six lived in a bungalow of thirty-three square meters.
▲ Stills from the movie "Kim Ji-young born in 1982"
In Jin Zhiying's childhood memories, he felt for the first time that the inequality between men and women stemmed from stealing his brother's milk powder. "When I was six or seven years old, every time my mother made milk powder for my brother, she would follow closely behind and dip her fingers in the milk powder that was accidentally spilled on the table to eat." But their grandmother, Ms. Gao Shunfen, who lived with them, hated Kim Ji-young eating her brother's milk powder very much, "as soon as she found Jin Zhiying stealing it, she would shoot her back hard, catching her off guard, and the milk powder spewed out of her mouth and nostrils." Sister Kim Eun-young never stole milk powder again after being taught once by her grandmother."
Jin Zhiying also asked her sister: "Is the milk powder not delicious?" Why not eat it? ”
My sister's answer was, "I'm not rare, and I'm definitely not going to eat that stuff again." ”
Although Jin Zhiying did not have a clear concept of the word "not rare" at that time, she could fully understand her sister's mood. Because from the tone of the grandmother's rebuke to them at the moment, the look in their eyes, the angle of their face, the height of their shoulders, and the rhythm of their breathing, they can be summed up in one sentence - "Dare to covet my golden grandson's milk powder?" "Grandma is not teaching them because they are long past the age of drinking milk, or because they are worried about the reduction of their brother's milk powder, but because everything about her brother is extremely precious, not something that any cat or dog can touch." Jin Zhiying felt as if he was not even as good as "a cat and a dog", and believed that his sister must have the same feelings.
Of course, in life, there are still many unequal treatment with younger brothers: it is only natural that a freshly steamed pot of rice should be served first in the order of father, brother and grandmother; fried tofu, dumplings, and pork round pancakes with complete shapes will also be sent into the mouth of their younger brothers, and the sister and Jin Zhiying can only pick up the small crumbs next to them to eat; the younger brother's chopsticks, socks, sanitary gowns, school bags and shoe bags are always paired, but these items of the sister and Jin Zhiying are always not a pair. If there are two umbrellas, it must be the younger brother himself to support one, the sister and Jin Zhiying two to support one; if there are two quilts, it must also be the younger brother himself to build one, the sister and Jin Zhiying two to cover a joint; if there are two snacks, it must also be the brother himself to eat one, the sister and Jin Zhiying two to eat a portion.
But what is surprising is that Jin Zhiying, who was still young at the time, did not envy the special treatment of his brother, "because from the time they were born, they were treated differently." Although she occasionally feels a little aggrieved, she has long been accustomed to all this."
In fact, in the book, Jin Zhiying's grandmother and mother are the two generations that have suffered the most from unfair treatment.
For Kim Ji-young's grandmother, Ms. Gao Shunfen, the proudest thing is to pull up four sons and keep the family in good order. The husband, on the other hand, was well-bred, never went to the land, and did not do farm work. What an obvious contrast, as a man, he relies on a woman to support his family, while Gao Shunfen has no complaints, only hopes that he will not steal outside and not beat himself. However, the four sons who were raised so hard single-handedly, in the end, only Jin Zhiying's father did his son's duty. Gao Shunfen used a set of incomprehensible fallacies to comfort herself who was so miserable in her later years: "Fortunately, I gave birth to four sons, so I can eat the rice cooked by my son and sleep on the kang cooked by my son like now, and really have at least four sons." ”
Although the people who are really cooking, cooking, and laying quilts are not Grandma's baby sons, but her daughter-in-law, Kim Ji-young's mother, Wu Mei-sook, Grandma always praises her son in front of everyone. And those mothers-in-law who seem to be enlightened and have a lot of love for their daughter-in-law will often think of their daughter-in-law from the bottom of their hearts, and hang up the words "If you want to have a son, you must have a son, at least two sons..."
So, when Kim Eun-young was just born, her mother, Wu Meishu, took her in her arms and kept crying and bowing to her grandmother and apologizing: "Mom, I'm sorry..." At that time, the grandmother comforted her daughter-in-law and said: "It doesn't matter, the second child will be a boy." ”
If Kim's grandmother can still make her own decisions, Kim's mother is forced to give up her dream. "People in that era thought that 'the son had to take charge of the whole family, and the man had to work to add glory to the whole family', and the daughter of the family was happy to sacrifice herself to support her brother." Therefore, her mother Wu Meishu went to work in the sewing factory at a young age in order for her brothers to eat and wear warm, and left her hands with eternal scars. This scar that has wrapped her life also happened to Jin Zhiying.
Later, her mother, Wu Meishu, also regretted her life and herself giving up her dreams because of child-rearing, but the greater regret was that "the regret and resentment of sacrificing the small self and completing the big self deepened, and finally the heartache messed up the relationship between the family."
In Kim Ji-young's generation, although the status of Korean women has improved, society has begun to encourage and support women's sense of rights, and the whole society seems to have changed a lot, but as long as you carefully observe the words and deeds of every ordinary person and the conventions in a family, you will find that everyone is still clinging to old habits, and this society has not undergone optimistic changes at all. Women have no right to speak, and men's right to speak has been woven into the norms of the whole society, and she has to accept it "smoothly", but she feels sad and unfair in her heart.
In Kim Ji-young's family, his brother is still the one who is loved by the whole family, but in the face of his brother's incomprehension and the favoritism of his family, Jin Zhiying learned to resist. "One night, there was only my mother and Kim Ji-young's three siblings in the family, and they decided to cook instant noodles for dinner. When the mother brought out a pot full of instant noodles and four pairs of chopsticks, the younger brother preemptively put the noodles he wanted to eat into the bowl, and Kim Eun-young knocked down on his brother's head. 'You take all the noodles away yourself, so what do we eat?' Also, wait for your mother, why are you so big and small. ’
Her mother, Oh Mi-sook, once again gave the noodles from her bowl to her brother and appeased Kim Eun-young and Kim Ji-young with "He's an old man." However, Kim Eun-young replied, "What an old man! I think it's because he's a son! After saying that, Kim Eun-young "snapped" and slapped his chopsticks on the table, turned and walked into his room.
This is the first rebellion of Kim Ji-young and Kim Eun-young sisters against the inequality between men and women, and it also shows that with the progress of society, people began to treat the children in their families equally and did not discriminate.
However, compared with the elders, Jin Zhiying faces more injustice from society.
For example, in schools, Kim's teachers will make boys the class president, and girls will never be entrusted with such a position. "From the fourth grade of elementary school, the class leader is voted by the students themselves, once a semester. From the fourth grade to the sixth grade, there were six votes in three years, but Kim's class elected six class leaders who were boys. Students also agreed that female students have better homework than male students and are more careful in their work. But somehow, whenever the class president election votes, everyone will still choose a male classmate as the class president."
For example, when applying for graduates, "The girl is too smart, the company will feel pressure, like now, you see, do you know how much pressure you give her people?" This is a sentence given by Jin Zhiying's college bully sister when she reacted to the unfair recruitment. The school bully sister eventually applied for the job with her own ability, but chose to resign after six months, because she found that there were almost no women in the position of manager of the company, because women did not have more permanent jobs in the work of men.
"A glimpse of the whole leopard," Jin Zhiying's school bully sister is also very difficult when facing a job, not to mention learning relatively ordinary Jin Zhiying. I went to a public relations company and found that although most of my colleagues were women, the executives were almost all men. After work, more inequalities between men and women are revealed: men and women are not paid equally, women have no or few parental leave, and they have to work hard during pregnancy or choose to leave. When the 31-year-old Jin Zhiying got married, she was constantly "promoted", so it was logical to lose her youth, health, job, colleagues, friends, dreams, etc. in order to have children, and became a "happy" full-time mother.
More importantly, in the later stage, Jin Zhiying also began to make his voice heard, gaining more understanding and attention from her husband. As Kim Ji-young said, "I don't think it's bad for me to live like this, as a mother, as a wife, I am sometimes happy, but sometimes I feel trapped there." It feels like you'll see the light around this wall, but there's another wall, and it's all walls in other directions. ”
From Kim Ji-young, I saw the "women" of South Korea. Her experience is so common that Kim Ji-young's story is happening, or is about to happen to you and me, and gender seems to become an invisible but powerful "system" that affects a girl's love, marriage, family, childbearing, work, almost all the private and public spheres. (Readers' Daily's comprehensive media coverage)