Gu Kailai, wife of a mortified Communist Party leader (BoXilai), appeared in a Chinese court where she was handed a suspended death sentence,
for killing her British business associate Neil Heywood, for presumably plotting
to harm her son after the two had an argument, where large sums of corrupt
money was involved. Based on an article written by “The New York Times,” Chinadefers Death Penalty for Disgraced Official’s Wife, she is more likely to
face life in prison, since those terms (suspended death sentence), usually
refer to life imprisonment in China.
According to “The New York Times,” Kailai, apparently bought
an animal poison from a public market and then lead Mr. Heywood to an apartment
where she plied him with tea and whiskey. “When he became drunk and began to
vomit, Mr. Zhang, the family employee, helped him into bed, prosecutors said.
Ms. Gu then took the deadly concoction that Mr. Zhang had been carrying and
dripped it into Mr. Heywood’s mouth after he asked for water. She then
scattered pills around the room to make it appear that Mr. Heywood had died of
a drug overdose.” Two days later employees from the hotel discovered his dead body,
police officials pronounced him dead and had his body cremated. In an article
by the “Foreign Policy,” Tale of the Dragon Lady, it is said to believe
that Bo Xialia had arranged for Heywood’s body to be cremated without an autopsy.
Articles such as “Foreign Policy,” lead people to assume that Mr. Xialia lured Kailai
into killing Mr. Heywood. If this were true, why would Ms. Kailai ruined her
graceful life in order to cover up for her husband?
Ms. Kailai, was a beautiful, hardworking and talented
politician, she studied at the top University in her country, spoke fluent
English, and became “a lawyer that took a leading role in the legal battle in
the United States involving chines firms, CNN states.” She later became the
author of a book called "Winning a Lawsuit in the United States," which
talked about experiences she had trough her law career. It seemed like Ms.
Kailai, had everything she desired, so what could had led her to commit such an
atrocious incident? That question is still unanswered and perhaps it won’t be
answered for many years to come, but one can only assume that she is paying for
her wrong doings.
It seems that the Dragon Lady stereotype does not only target Asian women, it sometimes targets those who we would less expect the stereotype to target like Hillary Clinton, Nancy Reagan, Mary Todd Lincoln and Marilyn Quayle. It's unusual that the media would portrait them as the dragon lady, mostly because they are white and they are wives of the president or vice president of the United States. The stereotype now-a-days starts to target women that are more dominant politically than their husbands, The New York Times states that, "there was often a sense that it was the wives who wore the pants, and sometimes called the shots. These women were seen as being steelier, and sometimes smarter, than their charming, boyish husbands. They were seen as scarier than their husbands." The media is not just misrepresenting Asian women as dragon ladies, it is also misrepresenting dominant political women, but the fact that that particular stereotype does not target all white dominant politicians in a regular basis, makes it seem as though it only targets Asian women. The stereotype does not offend the white women, because it is rare that they would be targeted with those stereotypical comments often, but in the other hand Asian women get offended, since the media constantly represents them as Dragon Ladies.
Works Cited
French, Paul. “The
Tale of the Dragon Lady”. Foreign Policy.
June 26, 2012.
Jacobs, Andrew. “China Defers Death Penalty for Disgraced Official’s Wife”. The New York Times. August 20, 2012.
Shadbolt, Peter. “Gu Kailai, China's 'Jackie Kennedy'”. CNN. August 19, 2012.
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