September 20 Readings Jaxon

 Diary of a Void discussed the phenomenon of women in Japan as office workers. I felt very strange and ridiculous when my friends from Japan told me that, as women, they have to pour tea for men in the office only because they are females. The stereotype that women should serve tea has been eliminated a long time ago in China, and I believe if you ask a woman to serve tea for you in a company, you can get sued. Japan is doing a good job preserving traditional cultures, and maybe there's a downside to it, which is hard to get rid of bad cultures as well.

To fake a pregnancy was surprising, from the descriptions in the book, I can see men are only treating her better when they know that she has been pregnant. I attended an event about analyzing Japan's low birth rate in Havard. The professor said that many Japanese women don't want to take maternity leave because they are afraid of giving trouble to their coworkers, and they might not be able to get back to work smoothly after the long leave. In the story, after the protagonist takes a long break, things actually get better. She doesn't have to do the work for men, and men learned to do the simple things by themselves.

 The Lonesome Bodybuilder, the Most Boring Red on Earth, and Breasts and Eggs stories discuss the struggle with female physical traits. Sex, period, and the body's shape which are defined in aesthetics by society. A female will become lonesome when she is walking against the majority. Reject to have sex but still want to have a baby and build a body shape that probably won't get understood by most people as a woman, people in the story live freely and pursue their selves, even if they might get criticized. 

For the Woman in the Purple Skirt, maybe I lost some important information, but I feel the narrator is committing severe stalking. Maybe the author wants to show that a figure like the woman in the purple skirt is hard in society, but she can still pay the rent and most of the bills.