Perfect Woman to Perfect Man

I was at the theatre during the weekend watching “Crazy Shakespeare” (疯狂莎士比亚)  by a local theatre group which tries to draw modern day lessons through various Shakespeare excerpts. One that was particularly memorable was taken from Midsummer’s Night Dream – a play in which there are many parallels with Chinese society.

Despite women gaining more power out of home, in the realm of love and marriage, they’re still held to the expectations and whims of men. This is evident by the expectation that women should be married by 25 years old (over 30 and they’re considered ‘leftover’); and the number of extra marital affairs that drive wives and mistresses to form support groups for each other.

A more controversial example is an online variety show called “Beauty Class” (魅力研习社) – which gives tips on how to be a ‘perfect’ woman, it’s tagline being ‘men’s heaven and women’s classroom (男人的天堂， 女人的课堂). The tamest lesson is learning how to entertain during house parties, the more risqué involves different genres of dances women can practice for their husbands before going to bed (burlesque, pole dancing etc.)

This tide however, is set to change. Most notably, the demographic shift due to having too many single men who will have to vie for women’s attention. Not surprisingly, men are starting to feel the heat, it’s no longer sufficient to own a house but also take care of their appearances. Some even go to the extent of learning how to pick up women to give them an edge.

Who knows, in the future we might see variety shows where men will need to learn how to be ‘perfect’ as well! It will be interesting to see what the manifestations of a ‘perfect’ man are.

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 26th, 2011 at 2:35 pm. It is filed under China, Culture and tagged with featured, relationships, TV. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.