Rio 2016: Wedding Proposal slammed as being a ‘d*ck move, and definitely not romantic’

Rio 2016 seems to have become a ‘who proposed better’ competition with, as many as 3 couples agreeing to marry each other at the games.

One of the ones that has captured the imagination the most was the proposal of Qin Kai to his sweetheart He Zi. Kai had proposed to Zi after hijacking the medal ceremony. She accepted and the social media had done a collective swoon and ‘Awwwww’ed.

However, there were some people who were very unhappy about it, claiming that the guy wanted to take the spotlight from her and that it was an unromantic gesture.

“What a way to add pressure to her, having the entire world watch her as she makes such a private and life-changing decision,” wrote Gu Jueyang on microblogging site Weibo.

“If she rejects his offer of marriage, she will be labelled a cruel person by billions around the world, watching. It may be masked as romantic but I feel otherwise.”

According to the BBC, another wrote on their facebook wall  slamming the “sexist” media coverage that they said focused more on the proposal than on Ms He’s sporting achievement.

“People get married all the time, only a few have the chance to achieve Olympic glory. Or should the little lady be relieved a man will have her?” asked Zoe MacGechan.

A London-based author Sunny Singh went as far as saying that the proposal revealed a sense of male entitlement.

According to the BBC, she said it was “a dick move, and definitely not romantic”.

“It’s a control mechanism, a way of saying ‘You may just have won an Olympic medal, or be a CEO or have designed a spacecraft, but really the most important thing is you’re my wife’,” she said.

“Imagine if it was someone like Michael Phelps receiving a medal and a woman came up and proposed – people would laugh at her. When men experience success, women are expected to stand aside and cheer from the background.”

She accused Qin Kai of taking advantage of an emotional moment “You would also have to be extremely brave to say no at that point. You’ve won a medal, you’re in public, you’ve worked your whole life for this. Even the best human being is likely to be emotionally shaky and vulnerable at such a moment. And women are taught from an early age to be nice and not to say no,” she added.