"When China’s “New Year Gala” — a four-hour annual variety show watched by 690 million people — aired on Feb. 18, the country’s feminists were jolted out of their chairs. One comedy sketch ridiculed “manly women” for not being marriage material, comparing them with what it cast as the feminine ideal, a professional model. Another bit suggested that female officials traded sex for prominent positions.
The response from feminist bloggers was quick. One post, which went viral on social media while the show was still live, described its sins simply:
The gala’s discrimination of women is surprisingly exhaustive — from appearance discrimination (based on weight and height) to employment discrimination to marriage discrimination (based on age). It basically exhibits an overall misunderstanding of women.
The gala, “the most widely watched television show on earth,” according to The Washington Post, has long provided excellent fodder for bloggers, with parodic commentary on it a tradition in its own right: a lighthearted slap in the face — or tu cao, literally, “to spit into one’s bowl” — of CCTV’s political and cultural hegemony as allowed by the world’s strictest censors. But this year’s jokes about women offset the typically jovial mood and shed light on a graver concern: how China will deal with an awakening feminist sentiment amid disorienting changes of economic life, with the possibility of political and social stalemates."
Read article by Di Wang from Aljazeera America.
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