Boy, am I glad the TVB reality show Bride Wannabes is over. Zooming in on a growing segment of society like that, under the harsh fluorescent lights, nevertheless leaves a lot unsaid.
The show was all the rage, and its recipe for success was: superficial problems blown out of proportion; the quest for the ideal mate portrayed as larger than life; and an intentional exclusion on the part of the show's creators of the real issues at play.
Yes, the show reflected the worsening trend of an imbalanced male-female ratio, which limits union; but, while focusing on these girls' quest to get their prince, it neglected the real problems behind their pangs of love. Instead, the implied message was that the only thing standing between them and happiness were the women themselves.
The people who derived joy out of laughing at the women's plight - one reason the show was so popular - aren't given the true reality. They missed out on what could have been: the show should have shone its harsh light on the gender gap and - what University of California, Berkeley professor Arlie Hochschild called back in 1989 in her groundbreaking book, The Second Shift - the 'stalled revolution' that got women into the workforce but with little change on the domestic front.
The 'wannabe brides' were portrayed as looking for a myth - the myth of ideal marriage. The counsel provided to them only reinforced the misrepresentation.
Both men and women, married and available, suffer because of the gap between ideal and reality. Marriage hasn't become any easier; in fact, numerous factors are making it harder. The 20th century ushered women of all classes into the workforce, empowering them with more financial and social independence, but it has created a huge gap between such advances and the lagging perceptions about gender and the strategies to deal with it.