Do You Love Him, or Want to Be Him?

In November 2023, something odd happened on the US App Store. ReelShort, a vertical short-drama app run by a Chinese company, shot to the top of the entertainment chart and, for a moment, pushed past TikTok.

The shows that got it there had titles like The Double Life of My Billionaire Husband, Never Divorce a Secret Billionaire Heiress and The CEO's Contract Wife. Each episode runs a minute or two and ends on a cliffhanger more outrageous than the last. In China we have a name for the genre: bazong, short for "the domineering CEO." And a lot of the people paying to watch it in America were women.

The plot barely changes from show to show. The heroine is ordinary: no famous family, no big career. The hero is anything but. He's rich, powerful and brilliant at what he does, the one person in the story who needs love least. And out of everyone in the world, he chooses her. He can say no to anyone, except her.

What makes these stories so addictive might not be "a rich man fell for me" so much as a bigger fantasy:

I may not be the center of the world, but I'm the center of the man who is.

Two kinds of fantasy

The hit stories written for men look very different.

In Chinese web fiction aimed at male readers, and in what English readers call progression fantasy, the hero usually starts with nothing. No money, no connections, no respect. Then he trains, levels up, beats his rivals and climbs, step by step, all the way to the top.

Put the two side by side and you get two sentences.

One goes: I started with nothing, and I ended up making the rules.

The other goes: I never made the rules, but the man who makes them will break every one of them for me.

Both fantasies want the same things: power, dignity, safety, the feeling of being special. They just take very different roads to get there. In one, you prove your worth by what you do. In the other, your worth has to be confirmed by someone powerful. A man who could have anyone chose you, so you must be one of a kind.

A desire, translated

That made me wonder. Why, in so many stories, can a man's desire point straight at the world, while a woman's has to take a detour through a man first?

"Who do I want to become?" gets translated into "What kind of man am I drawn to?" "I want power" turns into "I want to be loved by someone powerful."

It doesn't stop at money. We're very used to treating a man's intelligence as part of his appeal. There's something attractive about watching him talk about his work. We rarely stop to ask whether what we're drawn to is a kind of intelligence we'd like for ourselves. If we admire knowledge so much, why fall for the person who carries it, instead of going after it ourselves?

I think part of the answer lies in the words we grow up hearing.

Words that don't translate

Chinese has two words of praise for girls that have no real equivalent in English.

The first is dongshi (懂事). Literally, it means "understands things," which sounds like a compliment on maturity. But when adults call a little girl dongshi, it's usually not because she understands the world unusually well. It's because she doesn't ask for much, doesn't make a fuss, and doesn't cause anyone trouble. What it really praises is this: she learned early not to put herself at the center.

The second is xianhui (贤惠), roughly "virtuous and good at keeping a home." It praises a woman who looks after her family, supports her husband and handles every social obligation with grace. But look closely and the word says almost nothing about her: what she loves, what she's working toward, how she sees the world. It describes how well she takes care of everyone else.

Now think about how we praise boys: smart, ambitious, bold, going places. None of those words need anyone else. Leave him alone in a room and he's still clever, still bold.

One set of words asks, "How does she make other people feel?" The other asks, "What can he get done?"

I used to think this was a Chinese thing. It turns out it isn't.

In 2009, researchers in the US analyzed recommendation letters for academic jobs. Letters for women were more likely to describe them as caring, helpful and warm. Letters for men were more likely to call them brilliant, ambitious and confident. And the first kind of word made a candidate look less hireable.

In 2014, Sheryl Sandberg launched a campaign called Ban Bossy. A boy who takes charge gets called a leader, the campaign pointed out. A girl who does the same thing often gets called bossy.

Then there's a famous experiment from business school classrooms. Students read a case study about a real Silicon Valley entrepreneur. Half of them were told her name was Heidi. The other half read the exact same case with one change: the name Howard. The students rated the two as equally competent. But they liked Howard more and wanted to work with him, while Heidi came across as a little selfish.

A different language, a different continent, the same pattern. A man's strength belongs to him. A woman's strength first has to prove it won't make her unlovable.

No wonder desire takes the detour. "I want to be the smartest person in the room" sounds arrogant. "I like smart men" sounds like good taste. "I want to stand at the center of the world" sounds like too much ambition. "I want to be loved by the man at the center of the world" sounds like a love story.

Do you love him, or want to be him?

Which leaves a question that's more interesting, and harder to answer, than it looks: do you love him, or do you want to be him?

It can be both, of course. But the next time you find yourself drawn to someone brilliant, focused and passionate, it might be worth asking: mixed in with the crush, is there a little envy? Maybe even a small sting?

Maybe what pulls you in is how sure he sounds when he makes a point. How free he looks when he's lost in his work. The way he never has to apologize for his ambition. The way people actually listen when he talks.

If so, you might be falling not only for him, but for a version of your own life you haven't fully lived yet.

I don't think there's anything wrong with loving these stories, or loving people like that. We're drawn to what we admire; that's human. What's worth a second thought is whether, in loving him, we hand over our own hunger for knowledge, for power, for the world, and let him live it for us.

A good relationship isn't two people with the same strengths. It's two people who both face the world head-on. I can love your mind and keep building mine. I can step into your world, and still have a world of my own that's worth your stepping into.

The next story

More and more stories now let the heroine run a business, take her revenge, build an empire. But plenty of them still rush to hand her an even more powerful man by the final episode, as if to prove: look, she's this capable, and someone still loves her.

Male heroes rarely have to prove that their strength won't cost them love.

So maybe the truly new story isn't just one where the heroine also gets a company or a crown. It's one where her ambition is the story. She goes after knowledge, and not to meet a better man. She builds something, and not to prove she deserves to be loved. She does it because the world itself is what she wants.

One story says: I'll be the one who makes the rules.

Another says: the one who makes the rules will break them for me.

Maybe the next one says:

I don't want to be the powerful man's only exception anymore. I want to walk straight into the world, learn everything I can, and build some power of my own.

Not because it will make me more worth loving, but because this is the life I wanted all along.