Bohemia Bunny

When a person becomes a prize

October 24th, 2006 by lynnylchan under Comments

I got accused of being ‘hao lian’ (arrogant) over the fact that the boyfriend is a law student. How it came about was that I was saying some legalesey thing the boyfriend told me, and when the other kids didn’t believe me, I said “No really, my boyfriend’s in law school and he told me this.”

Upon which they erupted in catcalls and jeers. One girl said “Yeah we know, you hit the jackpot with him.” Others were more straightforward: “Oh, you’re just looking for an excuse to mention that your boyfriend is in Law.”

You might not believe me, but that’s not really what I was going for. I don’t need to put up with any lawyer jokes, much less be accused of being a golddigger. I was merely stating an opinion and telling them my basis for having such a view (which I realise qualifies as hearsay in a court of law, I know). If we had been talking about plants and the boyfriend was a botanist, I’d have mentioned that. If we had been talking about the best kinds of pipes to have in your house, and I was dating Luigi (the green one), I’d say that my boyfriend is a plumber.

So it just so happens that the boyfriend is in law school and we were talking legalities. The interesting thing here is actually their reactions, not mine. Firstly was derision. They mocked me for ‘hao-lianing’ (the verb form) about the potentially big-bucks-earning boyfriend. Then they said that just because they were all single, there was no reason for me to flaunt my attached status.

In mitigation, I would like to state that I didn’t know they were all single. Even if I did have such knowledge, it wasn’t something conscious. I never set out to make them feel bad about being single, simply because there’s nothing bad about being single. They’re all lovely young people, and I never meant to say otherwise.

What really makes this blogworthy is that THEY think lawyers earn big money and people dating lawyers or future lawyers have, in the words of the girl, “hit the jackpot”. I didn’t make him the prize of a lifetime. They did, by their perceptions and assumptions. I do take pride in the fact that he’s in law school, but that doesn’t mean I think any less of others who pursue other professions. They were the ones who reacted to his status, not me.

In this case, who’s to blame for the hao-lianing? I made a statement, and they coloured it with their sentiments. A little bit of Freudian projecting going on, perhaps?

So before you call someone a golddigger for having a rich husband, or an SPG for having a white man as a partner, think about the assumptions you are making, and whether the rich man or the foreign talent is being objectified not by the woman, but by you. Who’s the shallow one who sees only the money and the skin colour? Think about it.