Her Body as Her Weapon: The Importance of Being Jia Ling
When the movie “YOLO” premiered in theatres during the Chinese New Year, it caught the audience off guard. They were flabbergasted not only by Jia Ling, the film’s director and main character, who debuted in the movie 50kg lighter than her former self, but also puzzled by the ambiguity of the message — was she perpetuating or bashing body shame with her new look?
“YOLO,” an idea imported from the English-speaking world, stands for “you only live once.” Quite a cultural novelty for the Chinese, but a fitful title for a story that follows a secluded, overweight 32-year-old woman who rediscovered her sense of purpose in life by addressing things head-on, more specifically, through boxing.
To precisely simulate the main character’s mental state, Jia first gained 20 kilograms before losing a total of 50 kilograms. It’s not the first time actors or actresses conscript weight to the service of character building, Christian Bale, for example, but Jia takes it to a whole new level.
Jia Lin’s success as a director is undeniable- “YOLO” has raked in over $430 million, making her the highest-grossing female director of all time worldwide. But Jia’s role in shaking up feminism narratives in China, including female representation in the movie industry, is more of a debated subject. Many are accusing the movie of putting up a deceiving facade of female empowerment while falling short of progressiveness at its core.
Granted, “YOLO” is not perfect, and Jia herself is not the perfect feminist icon many might wish for. But I’m here to argue that her presence alone is worthy of every acclaim.
Ever since Jia made her debut as a director with the movie “Hi, Mom” in 2021, we can just feel the much-needed stimulation Jia instilled into the movie landscape, which is scarce, if not void, in female-driven storytelling. Even internationally acclaimed Gong Li has lamented the lack of substantial roles for women, half-jokingly stating that “actresses have no scripts to act.” “Hi Mom” was able to gross over $840 million and set the global box office record for a female director that was only recently surpassed by Greta Gerwig’s “Barbie.” It was dismissed as a mere fluke by many until “YOLO” arrived as a prompt reminder of Jia’s talent.
With “YOLO”, the first-ever big-budget Chinese movie centered around a full-figured heroine’s journey of self-actualization airing during the Chinese New Year, a time slot typically reserved for the most promising revenue-generating movies, it may not be too much to claim that we are finally standing at the forefront of an age where women are afforded the same level sophistication men have long been entitled to.
Critics like to say that the character’s eventual weight loss is, in effect, “a surrender to unrealistic body standards set by the society.” Even Jia’s glamorous looks in her movie promotional tours are blamed for deviating from her previous comedian persona and not being feminist enough.
With all the mixtures of expectation and aspiration that lent nuance to the concept of “feminism,” we should be more tolerant of anyone pushing the envelope and, truthfully, more lenient on ourselves. We are living in a world where the current version of female empowerment is reduced to one singular picture- women in suits speaking at boardroom meetings. However, no detail of this picture speaks to women in the real world who are living a far richer and more expansive spectrum of experiences. Every embodied identity — be it “plus-size,” the boxer, the working parent, or beyond — offers a distinct yet equally vital vantage on the vast continuum of feminine experience. At least YOLO’s heroine is a boxer. And for that, we applaud Jia Lin.
Neither “Hi, Mom” nor “YOLO” boasts intricate narratives. The former explores the theme of mother-daughter relations, and the latter a path of self-searching amid societal pressures. To what, then, do Jia’s films owe their popularity? I’d attribute it to her sincerity as a storyteller, a director and an actress, qualities rarely found in today’s film industry. This quality has defined Jia’s artistry from her debut, “Hi, Mom,” — an intensely personal mourning of her relationship with her late mother. “Even if inexperienced, that film deployed 100% of my perspective and life experience at the time,” she said.
She could have employed technology to create a visual illusion of weight shift, or simply chosen another theme. But she walked into the same lonely journey as her heroine, and had their experiences synced. In a behind-the-scenes video from the “YOLO” filming, Jia can be seen strolling down a lengthy hallway when she notices her reflection in the mirror and begins to cry. “That hallway was 12 meters long, but I realized then that I’d probably spent a year walking that path, or perhaps 42 years.” she said in an interview, recalling her journey as a comedian-turn-director.
Jia’s sincerity is rewarded by an audience who reciprocates with not only box office success but also reviews commenting on how Jia’s movies speak for them or speak to them.
In many ways, Jia Ling represents the growing pains of female-driven storytelling in a male-centric industry that is still caught between commercial viability and authentic expression. With every boundary she pushes, every shattered stereotype, every box office record broken, Jia makes it incrementally more possible for other women’s stories to simply be seen.
We can’t just have one Jia Ling; we need more.
