Myanmar actress Na Wa Yut won the admiration of her fans after declaring in a recent interview that she has no time or desire for romance.
In the now-viral interview with Myanmar Celebrity, the actress says: “I live happily. I won’t take a husband, have a boyfriend, or date.”
While clutching her adorable, fluffy Pomeranian, Na Wa Yut explains that she “sees a lot of unhappy couples. The ones who stayed married are often just those who are unable to divorce due to their circumstances.”
The actress also rejects the prospect of having children, saying she prefers the unconditional love she gets from animals. She tells her interviewer: “When you have children, you put your hope and dreams into them. With animals, you don’t have that. They depend on you and love you. That’s the kind of love I want.”
This is not to say that the actress doesn’t share her life with other people; she just doesn’t share it in a romantic way. In fact, her most fervent wish is to be surrounded by good people to share her life with.
“Whenever I’ve made donation, I’ve only ever made one wish,” she says. “I wish for my surroundings to be full of good people and for the bad people to be removed. I’ve never asked for anything else. This has been my one wish since I was a child.”
Though it may seem unusual to see such a strong stance against marriage and having children, this is actually a relatively common sentiment among Myanmar women. Although the vast majority of Myanmar women are married by age 50 – 87.9 percent, according to a UN report – this is considerably lower than all of Myanmar’s neighbors. The same report showed that in China, Bangladesh, India, and Thailand, the percentages of women married by the age of 50 are 99.8 percent, 99.6 percent, 99.3 percent, and 94.8 percent, respectively.
Additionally, a World Health Organization report states that fertility rates in Myanmar have dropped by more than half between 1987 and 2012.
Based on the thousands of positive reactions and replies from Facebook users, it seems that Na Wa Yut’s message will continue to be reflected in Myanmar’s comparatively low rates of marriage and childbirth for the foreseeable future.
