***
A few days ago, I saw an interesting sign at the bus stop by the MRT station. Unfortunately, I was in a hurry so I wasn't able to take a picture.
Yesterday, on the way back from Savour, I made an extra stop specially to take a picture (it's a time-sensitive ad):
"*Graphic showing a woman wearing 7 pairs of shoes in one week while a man wears 2 pairs*
If variety is the Spice of Life isn't it great to be a WOMAN?
Join MediaCorp as we celebrate the month of March with women from all walks of life. Because without women, life simply wouldn't be as interesting."
@lynnylchan's objection was that "I guess it's expecting too much for Mediacorp to be aware of how they're perpetuating gender stereotypes."
My comment was more pedestrian, and was agnostic to the question of whether the media should reflect the world as it is or the world as it should
Rather, it was that "May you live in interesting times" is a well-known curse.
Tonight, while I was eating dinner, I witnessed the 9pm Channel 8 drama, where a woman was trying to get her (seemingly on-off) boyfriend to propose to her. She schemed to have him believe that another guy was interested in her, and got her brother to give her flowers so her boyfriend would be jealous. She climaxed by delivering an ultimatum: marry her or they break up.
Naturally, with this show probably receiving MCYS money, at the end of the episode the guy was running offscreen - presumably to propose to his scheming and deceitful girlfriend.
Truly, women do make life interesting.
In a related observation, the antics that go on on the mornings of Chinese wedding banquets are truly a good metaphor for such marriages: the woman holds back to get the guy to humiliate himself and pay for the privilege of her company, before finally allowing him access to her inner sanctum.
Addendum: Here is another in the series, taken in March 2013
