#JANHAE#JANIVERSE
“Jan on Social Issues” Part 2
“i think i’m interested in social issues because they’re close to us. for example, air quality. my mom has allergies, and just staying at home, she can get sick. we have a house in chiang mai and would go there every year. but lately, we haven’t been going, because when i go there, i get allergy symptoms depsite that i never had them before. it’s because of extreme dust. i ended up thinking, “if even i get affected this much by going for such a short time, how do the people who live there live?” so i want to see thailand address this issue seriously. or to give an example related to the entertainment industry, i see the issue of people buying concert tickets just to resell them at higher prices. in the past, this was not a thing. it wasn’t this toxic. but now, everyone is stressed about trying to buy tickets, because they have to compete against bots and people who buys them to mark up. sometimes, the markup is almost in the hundreds or thousands, which is very cruel. it is taking advantage of consumers that shouldn’t happen at all. there should be some kind of system to manage it.”
“or if we look from the perspective of being a woman, when i have a lot of male friends, i end up getting comments on the internet using words that are harsh, as if i’ve done something wrong. i’ve tried thinking, “why aren’t women and men allowed to touch each other?” so i wanted to communicate this so that everyone can see that it’s possible. we can be friends. i think maybe it’s because society expects women to be proper and reserved and speak politely. being a woman in a group of men, we might appear “improper.” but what is that considered “damaging” [to one’s image]? why would that be considered bad? i don’t see anything damaging. being a woman requires proving yourself in many ways, even though we’re all human beings. women and men aren’t fundamentally different. our worth is equal. i want everyone to see that the fact that artists have friends is a good thing, isn’t it? so that they can be happy. because when artists are stressed, or when i’m stressed, the people who help us are our friends surrounding us. i don’t want these friendships to be ruined because of misunderstandings or wrong assumptions from many people.”
“there was a time when my friends and i had to keep some distance from each other, because we received attacking comments. i regretting losing that friendship a lot. from now on, therefore, i won’t accept that, because i don’t want a situation like this to happen again. i want everyone to understand that people of all genders can be friends.”
for example, in the series ewb, which tells the story of the relationship of fwb. jan herself also thinks that women’s rights over their own body to have this kind of relationship are still viewed quite negatively nowadays. jan thinks, “the character lal that i play has a fwb. if we look at real life, i still see some women being looked down on because they have fwb, even though they aren’t doing anything that hurts others. it’s not illegal. there’s nothing wrong with it. as long as you know how to take care of yourself, that’s enough. it’s each individual’s right, because honestly, regardless of gender, all of us have equal worth.”
#JANHAE#JANIVERSE
“Jan on Social Issues” Part 1
it’s not only her on-screen image that may people have seen, but jan is also a public figure who comes forward and advocates off-screen on many social and political issues, such as from marriage equality and air pollution issues, to normalizing the rights for artists to stand up and defend themselves from unfair treatment they encounter from people with bad intentions.
such awareness regarding rights and equality is not only because she graduated from philosophy, politics, and economics at the college of interdisciplinary studies at Thammasat University, but also she has been interested in politics since elementary school.
“i think that social and poilitical issues are all around us. for example, when i was in elementary school, i wanted to become a prime minister, because i wanted to solve traffic jams. because my house wasn’t that far from my school, but why did i have to wake up so early to allow extra time for commuting? or going back 10 years, i worked on a university project with my friends about the legal rights of lgbtq+ couples, because people close to me were facing those problems. now that marriage equality exists today, i’m very happy.”
“or even now, as a women, something i still notice is that women have to prove themselves all the time, even though it shouldn’t been necessary. women get criticized for having many male friends. some people are looked down because they have FWB. Or leaders still get looked down because of their gender. for example, the character lal that i play, she’s a supervisor who is sometimes belittled as less competent because she’s a woman.”
we sat and listened to jan explaining in details behind each issue she wanted to communicate. she began, “for example, when i was in elementary school, a foreign teacher once asked me what i wanted to be when i grew up. i answered i wanted to be a prime minister. the reason i answered that was because i had to wake up very early to get to school on time even though my house wasn’t far away. it seemed unreasonable. so i kept that question in my head and went to ask my mom, “who is the person responsible for solving this problem?” my mom said, “it has to be someone in that ministry.” i thought, “wow, then i have to work in that ministry to solve this problem!” when i studied a subject i didn’t like, i wondered again, “why do we have to learn this subject? what is it used for when we’re adults?” so i asked my mom again, “who decides this?” my mom said, “someone in that ministry.” that means, “i have to be someone bigger in order to be able to oversee multiple ministries.” therefore i came to the answer, “oh! i have to be the prime minister!” this is the beginning of my interest in social issues.
“or around my third year of university around age 21 or 22, i worked on a university project with my friends about the legal rights of lgbtq+ couples. i wanted to advocate for that to make happen, because i have people close to me who are lgbtq+, and at that time, there were news about medical treatment requiring a family member to sign, but they had no relatives but their loved one, who weren’t legally related in terms of legal status. it was a huge problem, and it’s a right that’s genuinely necessary.”
this means a lot to me, i often wonder if any of these actors care about the community beyond what it can do to launch their careers. thank you @Janhae for gay rights (literally) in thailand
jan is so inspiring. jan and her long standing awareness of lgbtq+ rights and social issues 🥹
🔗 https://t.co/mzYc35G81t
💬: around ten years ago, she worked on a project with friends about lgbtq+ partnership law after noticing problems faced by people close to her who could not access certain legal rights. now that thailand has marriage equality, she feels glad to see society finally moving forward
EWB EIGHTH EP
#EnemiesWithBenefitsEP8 #JANHAE
@thisisuma i honestly dont understand the need for almost every thai show to have comedy (questionable) relief duo regardless of genre, the way nobody gaf