'This Is What Happens To Pretty Girls'

Pangdemonium's 'This Is What Happens To Pretty Girls' is dedicated to the ongoing conversation of sexual assault in Singapore, and contributes to the global #MeToo movement. This is a heavy topic that I don't particularly want to watch on stage. We only just repealed marital immunity for rape. Have you read those typical misogynistic shitty comments in forums written by both men and women who approve of sexual violence and insults to women? Motherfuckers. Nobody deserves sexual violence as 'punishment' or 'this is what she (or he) deserves'.

Commissioned by Pangdemonium and written by Ken Kwek, this play picks out four stories to bring into painful existence on stage. A university lecturer and a student from another faculty, adults who were schoolmates on the same high school basketball team, software engineers who are colleagues on the same team in a male-dominated (tech) company environment, a father who imparts misogynistic values to his son, and the mother (who is a supposedly feminist sociology professor) throws out her values to protect her son who is the perpetrator of a sexual assault. The opening scene left me chuckling and bemused—Adrian Pang’s character did 12 pull-ups, topless. Why ah? What was that for?! Eye candy? Duh. 

I watched it grim-faced, thanks to the exceptional talent of the actors in reminding the audience that these aren't just stories, but these were/are lives and ongoing horrific experiences faced by many women and men. Often, it isn't about women (or men) playing games. It's about exploitation, perpetrators and victims. Emotions are the major culprit to sexual misconduct. Mostly, it’s also about ingrained attitudes towards gender roles, idiocy and a severe lack of understanding about what constitutes as boundaries between social relationships versus gender power play.