What Our Medias Are Feeding Us

I was sitting in Kuala Lumpur airport waiting for my flight back to China. Since I arrived early with no luggage, the process was super quick. I was bored so I checked my Wechat news and found this interesting piece about a famous Hong Kongnese actor Tony Leung Ka-Fai, the title goes 'The wife's appearance changed much, but Tony Leung still loves her'. This was not the first time I saw this kind of news about Tony Leung, praising him as a loyal and devoted husband, ESPECIALLY when his wife became 'ugly' 'not as slim and beautiful as when she was young'.

I was upset reading this again. it is a small piece of news as always for smart phone users. The content goes in my translation: Leung's wife was once very beautiful, but because of sickness she became overweight/fat and out of shape(body shape). Leung once said heartedly: as times goes, men may become more and more charismatic; but women's appearances became old with the household chores and kitchen oil fume. My wife was a very beautiful girl when she was young, now she became more beautiful in my mind(heart eyes). I sometimes peek her when she sleeps with warmth flowing in my heart: this is the women who gives me family! Without her I would never got my two little angels or even what I own now......

Then I checked Tony Leung Ka-Fai wife in Chinese in the largest Chinese search engine Baidu.com and got the titles like " Never leave or abandon, Leung and his wife's 28 years' happy marriage", " Actors' ugly wife" with Leung's name in subtitle, "Decent man! After seeing Leung's wife's picture, all sorts of feeling well up", "Leung's wife 's picture when she was young". The titles are disturbing. Let's see what is wrong with them:

1. Materialize women. Firstly, 'beautiful and young' was defined a very decisive reason that Leung married her, in another word, youth and beauty is the foundation of love to women; Secondly, after her aging, Leung as a successful actor was supposed to dump her because her 'lack of  beauty' as an unspoken rule; Thirdly, when women age our value decreased whilst men's increase.

2. Create double standard to both genders. When Leung didn't dump his aged wife, he became 'decent', but in the unspoken rule it is normal for him to dump the wife and marry another young girl his daughter's age. What if a powerful woman marries a younger guy? Please Baidu those news and see what the media says about the women. Loyalty in marriage is requested as women but considered nothing sometimes even negative as men. 

3. Simplify women's beauty. Beauty is a word created to praise women for their appearance and regulate their behaviors. 'Beauties' NEED to be young, skinny, with good taste of clothes and makeup, and dress themselves up everyday for men. But as a man, appearance doesn't count, but wealth, fame, brain, etiquette, etc. Please notice that this is also to pressure men to earn more money to "dress up" themselves.

I have nothing against Tony Leung Ka-Fai, meanwhile I don't believe things published in the media were exactly his words. What are our medias continually feeding us? I am not an expert in gender studies, but an ordinary woman as I am can tell the unhealthiness in those articles in dominant medias, how about the hidden points I didn't figure out oppressing both genders? How did/do/will these contents effect the kids and teenagers? 

We are now living in information era, men and women have the same capability and are doing the same job in despite of the biological difference. If the public media always try to educate us in a way that women are the second sex in the world, maybe next time when I was bored I would encounter an article titled " Research shows that women are not as smart as men"?

Joy is no expert in Gender studies, Gender equality; she is only expressing her own opinions.

All pictures are from Baidu, Joy has no copyrights.

The 3 points are far from enough, please feel free to add on.

It was a long time since Joy published her last article, she was just lazy.