I still remember a literature class I took in high school. The hyper-motivated teacher made us read a piece from the romance “I Malavoglia”, famous realistic book from the Sicilian author Giuseppe Verga. Please now, if you have ever read it even just by chance, stand up and say how boring it is. Please.
Boring or not – we are talking a masterpiece, a book published almost two centuries ago and full of pain and salty fish, salty bread and misery. The piece I was referring to is still in my mind because it was about the incredible sadness in which Lia, the daughter of the protagonist Padron ‘Ntoni, was living at that time.
Poor Lia. She decided to refuse a marriage proposal from her fiancée – we still are not entirely sure why she did that thought: bigger circumstances like war and poverty, un-love, unwillingness to clean fish, bad smell around feet or simply reluctance in having children like it’s a Guinness World Records challenge. Anyhow, nobody knew why, but no marriage took place. Eventually innuendos around citizens began to spread and Lia was forced to leave the village as fast as she could.
At the end of the text Lia was without hope, in a condition of sadness that was simply impossible to understand in my opinion. My classmates and my teacher, I’m pretty sure, agreed. She declared with a huge statement that her life was over, just like that, at 27 years old. She would never get married, have no children and she would continue living her life working as a fish woman and a prostitute – sex work was the only option available it seems. After this text, I remember, I went home with a great sense of injustice and many doubts about what being a single woman means, about what a great feminist I was when I thought about this Lia character and other confused thoughts.
I was shocked by this text as much as I was shocked by this video, published this last April (yes, emphasis on ‘this last’, because it’s 2016 we’re talking about). It’s about Sheng nu, Chinese women mostly known as Leftover Women.
This ad, which is viral, describes an unbearable situation for many women who are living in these decades of sociological changes and cultural transformations. SK-II, Japanese Beauty Company, declared that this video is about giving women strength to go on and stand up for their own destiny.
In China an over 25 women who survive the pressure of getting married – meaning a woman that recognize her value as a girl but most of all as a person – are not only brave, they are subversive. A woman like this is that kind of person who goes against centuries made of orders and submissions to husbands and households. In China you are useful and productive if you have children and you respect your spouse. Just like in Giuseppe Verga’s novel, if you are unmarried you are incomplete. Too bad that this time we’re not talking about fictional characters from 1800.
The level of hate and shame spread by the Chinese community has roots in culture but also in statistics. Since the ‘only child law’ took place in 1979, the number of men and women is that unequal that in 2020 there will be 24 million of men more than women. It’s astonishing if we think that normally on Earth we count 107 against 103 men.
A single woman is therefore seen as a threat not just for her own family (just like the character Lia) but for an entire nation that is becoming year after year an industrial and economical colossus. The pressure under which these women live is incredible.
And so I think, where is – if there’s any – the line between an unmarried and comical aunty and a simple single woman who enjoy being alone because being single allows her to have hobbies, to have a great career and most of all to love more herself as an individual. I also think about the line between a woman with a partner with whom she doesn’t create a married relationship, celebrated by an institution in which maybe she doesn’t believe. I ask myself why many culture, like the Chinese and the Italian, consider marriage as such a statement and achievement. After you marry, it seems, life path begins to be smooth and easier.
I got shivers if I think that in Italy we are not that different from Sheng Nu and from poor Lia. We got reminders every Christmas dinner we got asked when we’ll be married, every time a friend announces she’s engaged we got the look as the ‘single one’, every time we watch trashy tv shows about marriages, every time we see how much wedding businesses earn yearly.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that marriage is wrong or bad. I love to see couple who are truly in love, I smile if I picture myself with someone with whom I can share breakfasts, cat’s food to spread around and colorful socks. I’m just saying that marriage is not the goal, is not the safety cell, it is definitely not the achievement and the mark for a life with a ‘meaning’. I think that the value of a woman’s life is mark by the moment she is born, not the time she’s choosing which wedding cake and bridesmaid dresses are more appropriate for the ceremony.
