The two largest disadvantaged groups in the world are probably women and the poor.
So how difficult is life for a girl born in a poor family? In the story of Elena and Lila, the answer I saw was: It's so difficult that can make people cry.
Unfortunately, girls born in poor families are born with original sin. No matter what they do, they are almost always wrong.
If you do not study well, you are too stupid.
If you study well, why do you have such good academic performance? If you are not so good or not so hard, you don't have to continue to study and waste our money.
If you are not beautiful, you are too boring who will look at you.
If you are beautiful, why are you walking down the street wearing lipstick, you slut.
It's wrong to breathe alive, and it's all wrong to die. Female identity is like the blood stain on a skirt, a humiliating and dazzling mark. The mother told her daughter to carefully clamp the sanitary pad, and don't be ashamed of it falling out. It's your fault to bleed, it's your fault to get your skirt dirty, it's a natural fault to be a female.
The poor girl was forcibly taken away and sexually assaulted by the rich boy. No one blamed the boy. Instead, the girl got out of the car and was slapped by her brother. Where are you dead, why don't you stay at home?
Elena was repeatedly humiliated by her mother because she wanted to continue studying. Finally his father said, we can let you study, but you must be the best in the class. Merely "good" is not enough, it must be the "best" to be qualified to study.
However, such a father, compared with Lila's father, is already extremely loving and reasonable.
In another window across the street, Lila, the most talented in the town, still didn't deserve the qualifications to study. Because she insisted on continuing to study, she was thrown out of the window by her father and broke her arm.
Even afterwards, Lila gave up studying and helped in her father's shoemaker's shop. It was her brother who was qualified to learn the craft, but she was only responsible for cleaning.
Boys born in wealthy families receive meticulous care and encouragement for every little progress and every achievement. Even if he can't compare with Lila everywhere, he is the pride of the family and the darling of the teacher.
And what environment do the girls face? Every bit of effort and every bit of dream must be carefully hidden, so that you may not be humiliated by chance. Reading is secretly, and writing is a secret that cannot be told.
Even the class teacher who values Lila the most will kindly remind the girls and boys before their homework: Although they are boys, we can still show our level.
"They" (boys) are better than "us" (girls), as they should be. Even a class teacher who is progressive in thinking and attaches great importance to women's education still accepts such a presupposition subconsciously.
For poor women, education is a luxury, and freedom, dreams, and hope are even more distant fantasy. "My brothers at home have to work, why do you have the face to study in school?"
Even the woman who runs a bookstore has never read a book she sells, "Life is so hard, where can I have time to read it?"
And the bleak life of school-age girls is far from the saddest part of the fate of women.
When menstruation came, Elena cried with horror; Lila even said that the menstruation was dirty and she did not want to be friends with Elena anymore.
They panic so much because their physical maturity means that the ultimate suffering is coming: next, their lives are getting married, having many children, a dark home, endless housework, and children who seem to never stop. The noise and crying...
If no miracle happens, they will all become their own mothers. Those women are vulgar, grumpy, and hysterical. But what makes them like this? Little Elena felt that her mother's grumpy temper was because there were many black bugs hiding in the dark, crawling into her mother's mouth and nose every night.
What are those little black bugs? Isn't it just a world that oppresses women everywhere?
In that society, husbands help their wives buy things and push strollers will be pointed out by neighbors. When the wife asked, "You can't even beat your daughter, are you still a man?", even the loving and reasonable father would instantly kick open the door and beat his daughter with a bruised nose and swollen face.
Women are so cheap, if you don't insult and harm them, it will damage your own dignity and blood.
Therefore, in every building, there are hysterical mad women, and unkempt and yelling housewives. Before people abandon them, they have thought about the women who have been insulted and harmed from birth, and how can those women who live in pain and anxiety all their lives be elegant?
Poorly, the fiercest resistance of a woman is nothing more than throwing pots and bowls, or tormenting with other women.
The scary thing is that today, decades later, the blood stain on women's skirts has not been completely washed away.
Some people still questionning why the raped girl had to go outside in the middle of the night.
But why is it not the rapist who is condemned, but the victim?
There are still people who say that instead of fighting for "feminism", women should do their jobs better than men.
But why must women overcome all injustices and be better than preferentially treated men in order to be worthy of rights?
There are still teachers who say to students: "Girls can't do mathematics" and "Don't look at girls studying well when they are young, but when they grow up, their stamina is not as good as boys."
Not to mention that many educational data have long shown that women are better than men. Even if the one who has fewer resources and is not encouraged since childhood is really doing worse than the other, can it prove that they are stupid?
There are still people who say that women are irrational and will only be hysterical when they are in trouble.
But men have a male way of thinking, and women have a female way of thinking. If the latter still cannot speak because of the unequal power, or if they speak, they are ignored and reprimanded. How can they be "elegant" and "rationally" to follow Male confrontation?
Working hard like Elena, genius like Lila, still living so miserably. In the face of systemic oppression, it is the greatest unfairness to accuse individuals of insufficient struggle.
In works showing women's friendship, two themes often appear. A darker theme is jealousy and calculation; and another sad and beautiful theme is: you have to live for me a life that I can't get, and you have to do for me those things that I can't do.
These two themes also appeared in the friendship between Elena and Lila. Lila may be holding Elena to drop out of school with herself and ask her to skip school to the beach. But a few years later, Lila, who had dropped out of school, said to Elena who was still in school: You have to study hard for me because I have other things to do.
I wonder if you have noticed that the theme of friendship in works showing male friendship is often to fight side by side, fight together, and jointly pursue hopes and dreams. Male close friends are often portrayed as a sincere heart without gaps, so that they often slip to the edge of base love.
In fact, Elena and Lila also had such a moment, when they were reading "Little Women" together, when they dreamed of writing a book together in the future. But the beautiful segment soon passed, because the beautiful dream soon shattered like a bubble, because the reality soon was forced from all sides like a black wall, making their living space narrower and more sinister . What we saw later was that Lila started to jealous and hurt Elena for a while. Why is Lila so angry? I think that jealousy and calculations often appear in women’s friendships, not because girls are humble, but because they have long discovered in the cruel existence that they have no chance of winning in the struggle with men. Only when they despises the same sex can they grab a bit of pitiful benefit . How to avoid scheming when you are at a disadvantage, this kind of consciousness has been written into women's collective consciousness for thousands of years. Whether it's the housewife who pulls each other's hair in the corridor, the beaded concubine in the harem, or Lila whose heart is higher than the sky, all women face the common despair.
And the second sad and beautiful theme: Why do the girls in the movies always say to their best friends with tears in their eyes: Please live that life for me? You must know that in addition to the affectionate trust in the tears, there are more despairs that finally have to choose to give up. Women's lives seem to be born with more deficiencies. Sometimes it is the contradiction between career and family, sometimes it is the choice of love and school, and they cannot have both. People are accustomed to this and don't feel that there is anything wrong at all. Two boys can fight side by side to pursue their dreams together; while two girls, only by doing their best can they get half of each and fight for a complete life.
And just because the two women didn't talk to each other, as the audience, we already felt that this was a fresh and beautiful scene. Because I see a lot of black, gray seems to be considered white.----My Brilliant Friend
