This Mini-Doco On China’s “Leftover Women” Is Very Bleak And Confusing
Mainly because it is also somehow a skincare ad.
A Japanese beauty brand has released probably one of the most illuminating and depressing advertising campaigns about female independence in recent years. High-end skincare brand SK-II have made a barely branded mini-documentary about the phenomenon of ‘leftover women’ in China, a term used to describe women who remain unmarried after they turn 25.
As the very emotional video shows, being single in your late twenties may not seem scandalous to some, but to the families featured in this video it’s a source of great distress. One mother says in front of her crying daughter, “She’s not pretty… that is why she is a leftover woman”. One of the single women cries as she explains to the camera, “I don’t want to get married just for the sake of marriage. I won’t be happy that way”. Oof.
Okay, first up: this video is legitimately heartbreaking to the point where if you are having a rough day today, I am implore you not to watch it (I am having a medium-to-good day and I almost cried, but as I was watching it a fly flew into my mouth, so that was also a contributing factor). This ain’t no ordinary moisturiser ad.
Apparently SK-II, which mainly focuses on anti-ageing products, plans on creating a series of these ads called “Change Destiny”, which are all about subverting traditional cultural attitudes towards women.
It’s weird because I know that in watching this, I should feel like I’m being duped — ads that are designed to evoke a strong emotional response, that you can associate with a product are usually manipulative — but for some reason I don’t? The ad is not overly branded, it doesn’t make a connection between being happy alone and having a lit SK-II skincare regime, and it’s teaching me about something I didn’t know about before.
Campaigns that focus on how ‘real’ women interact with beauty products are not new but they’re usually pretty crass; think the Dove body positivity ads which assume that women are just vulnerable creations who at a minimum, hate their bodies and themselves, and can achieve empowerment through their products. Somehow it doesn’t feel like we’re being tricked here.
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