little women but real humans

both this drama and the 2020 adaptation of the novel 'little women' were really good and feminist in nature. i don't have to explain why the 2020 movie was so revolutionary because really it speaks for itself but in this drama, the feminist tones are more subtle in nature.

our main character (albeit disliked by a lot) was someone who openly defied the usual female main character mold for whom money does not matter at all. she openly claims to like money and is willing to play a little dirty to get it. also, she has been divorced, she works a normal job and she openly states wanting to marry a rich man! what an unusual main character! she is not a superhuman though. she's just normal, average and ordinary. she isn't sending people flying with just one punch, she's just trying to live her life and provide for her younger sisters. she likes girly things (she is LIKE the other girls), she likes lip glosses and she still likes to binge on ice cream. she knows she's popular among men, she isn't modest about it. yet, she knows she is not very intelligent and is honest about her depositions. injoo feels like a real person. she is not a blank slate you can project on, she is not the quirky 'not like other girls' character, she isn't park shin hye's 'the heirs' character. she's somewhere in the middle. she is an amalgamation of all the heroines who weren't given a chance to be themselves, who were put in a box, who were just there to be the male lead's arm candy- the difference is that she was actually allowed to be who she was. she is oh injoo and she is a real person trying to get by.

our second sister is oh inkyung. now oh inkyung is a badass, okay? for me, she is the most relatable out of the three sisters. i could see so much of myself in her that her scenes were sometimes hard to watch. as a highly sensitive person, navigating the world could be hard. when every single thing affects you and you let yourself be affected by it, your life is anything but a smooth sailing ride. ignorance isn't for us. inkyung is tough yet soft, she is determined yet wavering. she has a strong sense of justice and for her, justice is more important than money. although, she juggles between what is more important: her family or justice which is understandable. she is rash and makes some horrible decisions but they come from a place of wanting to do the right thing. inkyung loses and loses during the entirety of the show but her morals never lose. she's what i call a 'strong female lead'. she is a superwoman but not in the sense that she can land a punch on you and you are done (sorry saebom from happiness, this all feels targeted at you) or even using a bitchy attitude to overpower you. she uses facts, logic and yes, emotions to defeat her nemeses. and although it's slow, she surely wins at the wind which is so satisfying to watch.

our third sister is oh inhye. to inhye, her sisters' love is suffocating. it is a burden. she can be immature at times but that is okay, she is just a teenager. she is our meg march. although, she is still very different from the actual meg march. she too chooses true love over anything else. for inhye, chosen family is much more important than your real family. while it is an obligation for injoo and inkyung to love her and provide for her, hyorin loves her for who she is so sets off with the love of her life. it's a fairytale come true and although, a lot of people might think that her art is more important to her than anything else, it is actually her love for hyorin and vice versa that is the single most important thing in her life.

so these are our three sisters and who make this show what it is. there are other characters as well but none of them are written as well as our three main leads. all three of them are very different from each other, yet all three have something that connects them to each other. it is love, familiarity, obligation and duty. as the plot progresses, we see where each character's priority lies and how differently they interact with different situations and characters.

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