The two largest vulnerable groups in the world are probably women and the poor.
So how difficult is life for a girl born in a poor family? In Elena and Lila's story, the answer I see is: It's hard to cry.
Unfortunate girls born into poor families are born with original sin, and no matter what they do, they are almost always wrong.
If you don't study well, you are stupid.
If you study well, why do you have to study so well, 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're beautiful, why are you walking down the street with lipstick on, you slut.
It is wrong to breathe alive, and it is wrong to die. Female identity is like the blood stain on the skirt, a humiliating and dazzling mark. The mother told her daughter to carefully clip the sanitary pad, so as not to fall out and be embarrassed. It's your fault to bleed, it's your fault to get your skirt dirty, it's your fault to be born a woman.
The poor girl was forcibly taken away by the rich boy for sexual assault. No one accused the boy. Instead, the girl got out of the car and was slapped in the face by her brother. Where are you dead, why don't you just stay at home?
Elena is repeatedly humiliated by her mother for wanting to continue her studies. Finally his father said, we can let you study, but you have to be the best in the class. Mere "good" is not enough, it must be "best" in order to be eligible to study.
However, such a father, compared with Lila's father, was already extremely loving and reasonable.
In another window across the street, Lila, the most talented person in the town, was still not worthy of reading. Because she insisted on continuing to study, she was thrown out of the window by her father and broke her arm.
Even later, 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 a genius who could only be responsible for cleaning.
A boy born in a wealthy family receives careful care and encouragement for every progress and achievement. Even if he can't compare to Lila everywhere, he is the pride of the family and the darling of the teacher.
And what about the environment the girls face? Every bit of hard work and every bit of dream must be carefully hidden, so as to avoid being humiliated. Reading is a secret, and writing is a secret that cannot be told.
Even the head teacher, who values Lila the most, kindly reminds the girls and boys before they do their homework: Although they are boys , we can still show our level.
"They" (boys) are better than "we" (girls), as it should be. Even the head teacher who is progressive in thinking and attaches great importance to women's education, still subconsciously accepts this presupposition.
For poor women, education is a luxury, and freedom, dreams, and hopes are far-fetched fantasies. "The brothers at home have to work, how can you have the face to study in school?"
Even the woman who owns the bookstore has never read the books she sells. "Life is so hard, where do I have time to read these?"
And the bleak life of school-age girls is far from the most tragic part of women's fate.
Elena cried in horror when she had her period; Lila even said that menstrual men were filthy and would not want to be friends with Elena anymore.
They are so panicked because their physical maturity means the end of suffering: what follows in their lives is marriage, many children, dark homes, endless chores, children who seem to never stop The noise and crying...
If no miracle happens, they will all become their own mothers. Those women were vulgar, grumpy, hysterical. But what made them like this? Little Elena felt that her mother was grumpy because there were many little 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 an endless web of oppression of women everywhere?
In that society, husbands would be pointed at by neighbors for helping their wives buy groceries and push strollers. When his wife asked, "You can't even beat your daughter, are you still a man?", even a loving and reasonable father would instantly kick the door and beat his daughter bruised.
Women are so lowly, if you don't insult and damage them, it will simply damage your own dignity and blood.
So in every building, there are hysterical crazy women and unkempt, cursing housewives. Before people hate them, have they ever thought about how to be elegant for those women who have been insulted and damaged since birth, those women who have lived in pain and anxiety all their lives?
The pitiful thing is that the most violent resistance of women is nothing more than throwing pots and bowls, or fighting with other women.
The scary thing is that today, decades later, the blood stain on women's skirts has not been completely washed away.
There are still people questioning why the girl who was raped had to go outside in the middle of the night.
But why is it not the rapist who is condemned, but the rapist?
There are still people who say that instead of fighting for "feminism", women should do their jobs better than men.
But why do women have to overcome all injustices and become better than favored men in order to be entitled?
There are still teachers who say to students: "Girls can't do math", "Don't look at girls who study well when they are young, but when they grow up, they can't compare to boys."
Not to mention that many educational statistics have already shown that women are better than men. Even if the one with few resources and no encouragement from an early age really does worse than the other, does it prove that they are stupid?
There are still people who say that women are irrational and will only be hysterical when things happen.
But men have men's ways of thinking, and women have women's ways of thinking. If the latter cannot speak out because of the asymmetry of power, or if they speak out, they are ignored and reprimanded. How can they "elegantly" and "rationally" follow? Male confrontation?
Work hard like Elena, genius like Lila, and still live miserably. In the face of systemic oppression, blaming individuals for insufficient effort is the greatest injustice.
Two themes often emerge in works that show female friendship. One of the darker themes is jealousy and calculation; the other, more sad and beautiful, is: You have to live for me what I can't get, and you have to do for me what I can't do.
Both themes also appear in Elena and Lila's friendship. Lila may have asked Elena to skip school and go to the beach with the intention of letting Elena drop out of school with herself. 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 don't know if you have noticed that in the works of male friendship, the theme of friendship is often fighting side by side, fighting hand in hand, and pursuing hopes and dreams together. Male best friends are often portrayed as sincere and without gaps, so that they often slip to the edge of basic love.
In fact, Elena and Lila had moments like this too, when they read Little Women together, when they dreamed of writing a book together in the future. But that beautiful episode soon passed, because that beautiful dream soon collapsed like a bubble, because the reality was quickly pressing in from all sides like a black wall, making their living space more and more narrow and sinister . What we see later is that at one point Lila started to get jealous and hurt Elena. Why is Lila so angry? I think that jealousy and calculation often appear in female friendships, not because girls are inherently mean, but because they have long found out that they have no chance of fighting against men in their cruel existence, and only by squatting against the same sex can they grab a little pitiful profit . How not to take advantage of a disadvantage has been written into the collective consciousness of women for thousands of years. Whether it's a housewife pulling each other's hair in the corridor, a concubine full of pearls in the harem, or Lila, who has a higher heart than the sky, they are all facing the common desperation of women.
And what about the second sad and beautiful theme? Why do girls in movies always say to their best friends with tears in their eyes: Please, you must live that life for me? You must know that in addition to the affectionate entrustment in those tears, there is more despair that finally had to choose to give up. Women's life seems to be born with more defects, sometimes it is the contradiction between career and family, sometimes it is the choice of love and study, and it is impossible to have both. People get used to it and don't feel anything wrong at all. Two boys can fight side by side to pursue their dreams; and two girls can only get half of each other and put together a complete life if they try their best.
And just because the two women didn't fight each other, we as viewers already felt that this was a fresh and beautiful scene. Because black has been seen so much, gray seems to have been regarded as white.
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