quartz | A video intended as a tribute to China’s female medical
workers backfired as people instead vented their frustration over the
way Chinese state-owned media outlets use women as tools for propaganda.
The video,
posted by Gansu Daily, a government-owned newspaper in Gansu province,
showed over a dozen mask-wearing female nurses, who were weeping as
their hair was shaved off. They were about to be sent to Hubei, the
Chinese province worst hit by the coronavirus, where they would help
treat patients. The video attempted to paint the women as “the most
beautiful warriors” who fight the epidemic, praising their bravery as
they sacrificed their hair so they could better wear protective gear
when treating patients. But instead, the video was met with largely
angry comments on China’s Twitter-like social network Weibo.
Many
critics said that the way the nurses were treated was humiliating, not
complimentary of their bravery. In one scene, a nurse averts her gaze so
that she doesn’t have to see her newly cut-off ponytail in her
hairdresser’s hands. In another shot, some female nurses had tears
rolling down their faces after their haircut.
The video has now been deleted after the online backlash.
“In the video, the people who shaved the women’s heads
grabbed their ponytails roughly and just started shaving their hair
using electronic clippers. Are you treating them as humans or some
animals waiting to be shaved? I am so angry that my mind’s gone blank,”
said a user (link in Chinese) on Weibo yesterday (Feb. 17), when the video started trending on the network.
“If
you didn’t tell me they were medical workers, I would have thought they
were some evil criminals who were going through this serious
humiliation… Even their tears are used by the authorities to try to
touch the audience, making them the illustration of the spirit of
collectivism,” wrote Chen Mashu,
an author for “Epoch Story,” an account on messaging app WeChat that
publishes analyses and first-person accounts of social affairs.
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