Now, a moving new video from skin-care brand SK-ll is calling attention to the heartbreaking challenges these women face. “I won’t be happy that way”. Oof.
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The following video, which comes from Japanese beauty brand SK-II, explores the concept of China’s “Sheng Nu” or so-called “Leftover Women” and the tremendous pressure they come under from both their families and society in general to settle down and marry, regardless of whether they have found a person with whom they legitimately want to spend the rest of their days.
Luxury skincare giant SKII has created a video it hopes will help break down the social stigma of being a single woman in China, creating a video that zeroes in on just a few of these apparent spinsters and their dissatisfied parents. This age standard seems to get lower every year as more and more young women start to feel societal, as well as parental, pressure to get hitched quick. It brings out the real-life issue of talented and courageous Chinese women feeling pressured to get married before they turn 27.
“Being independent is a great lifestyle and it’s the life I want”, says one woman. The point is illustrated here, when a woman says of her unmarried daughter: “She’s just average looking; not pretty”.
Be sure to enable closed captions before pressing play, because you won’t want to miss a single word of the empowering lessons these Chinese women learn when standing up to their families. Who says men can not be the leftovers though?
But the parents’ hardline stances appear to soften when they visit a matchmaking “marriage market” only to find self-affirming messages of independence from their daughters.
In a four-minute short documentary, SK-II not only shares these women’s stories but also seeks to change their labels from “leftover women” to “power women”.
“But I believe that this trend of women who choose to be single and independent is going to increase and this is the beginning”.
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Despite thriving careers, the women in the film are seen as outcasts and disappointments for not being married.
