Legitimate as they are, gender and sexuality issues are still something that most of us mention with lot of shyness and discomfort. Citizens of a country that has not been through a sexual revolution, we are under an oppressive pressure of the vestige of Confucian morality.

It is another unfortunate instance of the market opening, known as mở cửa, that when there is an opportunity for instinctive needs to erupt and explode, the overall picture becomes wild and dreary and moral values degrade unceasingly in all social aspects. In the sexuality area only, abortion could have hit a record, while sexually transmitted diseases and infertility are increasing at an uncontrollable speed! Caught in such a grey zone, women citizens must always change their colors to act in different roles in some very typical circumstances. On the surface of what we see, Vietnamese women of today seem to have been much released. But if we get to know how carefree they really are when they are with their friends, we will clearly see the artificiality and the pressures they must suffer from as they need to frequently change their look and style, trying to dilute themselves in places where moral norms are expected: Workplaces, schools, public spaces, in-laws’ homelands, among many other places, become stages where they are forced to act!

A status of conflict smolders, between
wanting vs. not wanting,
erupting vs. squeezing,
desiring vs. suppressing,
ignoring vs. playing cool,
being happy vs. being stunned,
screaming vs. being silent,
getting mad vs. getting blank,
and much more.