Online review -- Stereotypes of “Bounty Lady” (My盛 Lady)

 “Bounty Lady” (My盛 Lady) is a 2013 modern drama produced by TVB and starring Dayo Wong, Kate Tsui, Sharon Chan and other actors. The drama is about Heung Kwong-nam (Dayo Wong), a public relation expert, being famous as a savior, helping single ladies to find a boyfriend and have a happy marriage. The female protagonist, Sing Fa-lui (Kate Tsui) is a new account officer, who misconceives Kwong-nam and his team as lazy and irresponsible. In the drama, both Kwong-nam and Fa-lui tried to help their clients, unmarried ladies, to have happy marriage.

  The reason why I chose this drama is because it raised many people’s attention, attracted them to watch TV drama again and discussed about the drama on the internet when it has been screened on TV. People noticed not only about the acting skills of Dayo Wong, but also the situation of ladies unable to get married in the drama and also in the reality. Another reason which I noticed about this drama is the stereotyping of male and female presented in the drama.

  In “Bounty Lady”, there are few cases of females seeking help from Kwong-nam and they are presented as having many weaknesses. For example, the first client Judy (May Chan), although she is well-educated, kind and wealthy as her father is the chief of a village, she cannot get a boyfriend because she is overweight. Later she was jealous about Fa-lui, who is thin and beautiful, and taught by Kwong-nam that she must lose some weight in order to have a good boyfriend. Audiences are willing to accept certain values which females have to be slim in order to find true love without questioning. Apart from Judy, other ladies such as Yam Mo Lin (a boyish policewoman), Windy (an author who persuades other females to remain single) are presented as rude, having a lot of bad habits and not deserve to have a boyfriend until the end of the drama. But the drama implies the final message: every woman needs to have a partner and get married otherwise she cannot have true happiness.

  Apart from women, men are also stereotyped in the drama. It is so obvious that not only the women in the drama, but also the audiences, see Kwong-nam as the ‘savior’ of unmarried women. Although he shown as lazy and having fun all night at the beginning of the drama, he can always help females to find true love and shows that he is serious in helping them solving love problems. However, other male characters are seen as not masculine enough as they are weak, jobless, obeying lover’s unreasonable commands and other weaknesses.

  This drama is able to be famous because most of audiences, Hong Kong people, shared same memories as the number of unmarried Hong Kong ladies is growing these years and sometimes their behavior are considered as unacceptable. When we mention about Hong Kong ladies, we often think about females who are greedy or treating their boyfriends badly. When we watch the drama, we can easily find the relations between the drama and the reality, such as Paula (Toby Leung), she is a greedy woman who ask people to pay more wedding gift money, which is an irony of the “$500 Hong Kong lady”, who posted about asking for not less than $500 of wedding gift money on her facebook page.

  All in all, the drama further strengthened the stereotype of women, asking them to be gentle, slim and beautiful while the image of men is degraded and presented as weak and not masculine. Also audiences can decode the drama as getting married is the only way for women to gain happiness.

(615 words)

Chan Ying Tung (Irene) 10487584 (21233765)