As soon as I published a couple of posts on Russia, Google started placing ads for sites with mail-order brides listings on my blog. The last (and the only) time I visited a site of this kind was many years ago. The moment I saw the flashy heading proudly announcing "Place 10 girls in your shopping cart, and we'll give you 3 more for free", I felt my blood pressure rising to a dangerous level and had to flee the site. This time, I armed myself with an alcoholic beverage (which helps lower the blood pressure) and plunged into the depths of one of the sites advertized on my blog in order to see for myself how bad things are.
The first glance on the site in question (which I'm not going to link here to avoid promoting this horrible practice) made me realize that I would not be able to place any of the personal ads that appear there as an ilustration to my blog post. Doing so would immediately cause my blog being tagged as pornographic in every single directory.
This was one of the saddest things I have seen in a while. You see pictures of women of all ages and social/educational backgrounds wearing next to nothing in the best of cases, assuming the most provocative sexual positions you can imagine, and accompanying these pictures with captions that are often sadder than the pictures: "I am a very spiritual person," writes a woman who is photographed lying naked on her stomach, smiling at the camera. "I don't care about your appearance. The only thing that matters in a person is your soul," says another participant who is wearing an almost non-existent g-string and is pushing up her naked breasts with her palms. "I love reading poetry and prose," announces a very young woman who is barely out of her teens. She is sitting with her legs spread apart touching her vagina.
These women are obviously not doing this because they are on the brink of starvation. The picture portfolios are evidently done by professional photographers, often in a studio. The underwear (when there is any) looks expensive, the women are well-groomed, some of them know English pretty well. When we read the women's profiles, it becomes clear soon enough that these are middle-class (sometimes even upper-middle-class women). There is no doubt in my mind that there is a lot they can offer to themselves and to the world. Why, then, do they choose to humiliate themselves in such a way? Why do they turn themselves into a piece of meat ready for consumption by any one who chances to come upon their pictures?
I blame the Soviet Union, people. Human beings have this need to strive for something, you know. We need a goal, a dream, something to organize our existence. Spiritual, intellectual, and professional growth were not an option for the citizens of the USSR. Personal relationships were broken down and undermined through a series of policies instituted specifically for that purpose. So, what was left? Material possessions, of course. The 70ies and the 80ies in the Soviet Union, were the decades of the purest, utterly unbridled, insane materialism. Accumulating stuff was the only goal the people were allowed to pursue and they pursued it with a vengeance. Today, people often mistakenly believe that this rampant consumerism came to the post-USSR space with capitalism. This belief can only be entertained by those who haven't lived in the Soviet Union in the last decades of the Soviet regime.
As a result of this cultural and historical heritage, beautiful, intelligent, educated women in the former-USSR countries often believe that selling themselves for sexual consumption of people from other countries is a great life choice. We were taught to believe that the only thing worth desiring is material well-being. At the same time, working for a living came to be considered shameful and stupid. Having a lot of money and things but not through actual work, that was - and still is, unfortunately - the ideal life strategy.
The kind of collective trauma we experienced in the Soviet Union does not heal overnight. I don't know how soon we can start hoping for a change in the Soviet mentality. Until then, sadly, mail-order brides*** will keep trying to sell themselves.
*** I hope it is clear from this post that my analysis has to do only with the countries of the former Soviet Union. Other countries also have this phenomenon but the reasons for it there are completely different.
13 comments:
----spiritual, intellectual, and professional growth were not an option for the citizens of the USSR.
Aren't you carried a little too far away here, you, a descendant of several generations of successful women? :) :)
I see the causes of the problem quite differently, and for me consumerism is not the main ingredient. Maybe just an amplifyer...
Despite of what some western Marxists think, the Soviet society (except maybe for the original population of the large cities) remained highly traditional in terms of gender stereotypes and gender roles. Women liberation was limited to the workplace - and that because country needed everybody they could get into the workforce. As a result, women ended up in a very unequal position, not only responsible for their work (where they had glass ceilings and all such kind of thing), but also doing 90% of domestic chores and childcare. Apartments were distributed by state and free market was either nonexistent or too expensive for most women (or men). Thus, although divorce was allowed, it was often very difficult to actually physically separate. Divorce, premarital sex, extra-marital sex, any sex :) had social stigma attached to them. One could also add a deficit of acceptable male partners which was a result of wars, industrial accidents and alcoholism, and which made men very confident in their ability to live as they please, without enough concern for their women.
Thus, after Soviet way of life has collapsed (and with it a few regulations aimed to ensure gender equality), a very high percentage of women decided to seek refuge in what they saw as a good version of the traditional arrangement: man the provider, and woman the caretaker. In other words, pendulum went to the opposite extreme. As only a small percentage of the FSU men are wealthy enough to live a one- paycheck-per-family lifestyle, the western men are perceived as being able to provide FSU women with the life according to that model. Of course, within this traditional model a woman has to offer what traditional men expect - including a beautiful body. Advertisement bordering with pornography is again, in my opinion, a detail, not the main point here. Some agencies just are more aggressive than others...
V.
"Aren't you carried a little too far away here, you, a descendant of several generations of successful women? "
-I left, remember? And a huge part of that was this endless materialism.
"women decided to seek refuge in what they saw as a good version of the traditional arrangement: man the provider, and woman the caretaker"
-That's why it seems so weird that they are trying to sell themselves as sex objects, while describing their ideal partner as being between the ages of 40 and 65. They would have been much more successful postiing pictures of themselves in a 50ies style dress, with an apron, and a plate of cookies.
I know that many people think that this phenomenon is caused by women believing they can find a "traditional" husband overseas. I don't buy into this idea for a second, though. The love of "halyava" doesn't have a gender. Is there even an adequate translation for this beautiful concept? :-)
---The love of "halyava" doesn't have a gender. Is there even an adequate translation for this beautiful concept? :-)
"Having your cake and eating it too?"
V.
---They would have been much more successful postiing pictures of themselves in a 50ies style dress, with an apron, and a plate of cookies.
Yes, but haven't you ever heard that ideal wife is a lady in the dining room and a whore in the bedroom? The agency is just trying to provide the experience which is prefect on all levels. :) :(
V.
For non-Russian speakers: there is this beautiful joke that illustrates the meaning of "halyava" very well.
At an all-you-can-eat buffet, a man, who desperately keeps stuffing his face with food, asks another man: "Why aren't you eating any more?" "Well, I'm not hungry. I've had enough to eat" says the other man. The first man looks at him in disbelief: "What are you, an animal? You only eat when you are hungry? Think about it, this food is FREE!"
----I left, remember? And a huge part of that was this endless materialism.
Why did you go to the West then, and not to some Indian ashram, for example?
V.
"Why did you go to the West then, and not to some Indian ashram, for example?"
-First of all, because at that age I had never heard the word "ashram." :-) I'm still not very clear on what that is. :-)
I knew for a fact that my material level of well-being would suffer a dramatic drop, which it did. But I wanted to be in a place where people have values, convictions, and beliefs. Where it's ok to discuss your ideas and work to put them in practice. I wanted to be surrounded by people who don't laugh when they hear the words "civil rights" and "individual responsibility." I wanted to be around people who aren't constantly afraid of something.
I remember how in Kharkov, at my university, we had an American textbook where we had to answer questions about what we are ready to do forr the environment. Everybody laughed like it was the biggest joke in the world. And that's in the country of Chernobyl. :-(
Halyava: sparkle your essays and books with these great jokes, and soon readers will draw parallels between you with Zizek!
Since I am ignorant of the issue, your analysis of the mail order brides phenomenon seems singular and reasonable to me. I have always thought that mail order brides were desperate and naive young girls coming from lower social strata. My perception may come from popular movies I saw or novels I read, or because I can't understand why someone who is not desperate financially comes up with such a horrible idea of living.
Ol.
Thank you, Ol. I wish the jokes were of my own invention. :-)
Back in business after untimely death of the old laptop...
---I remember how in Kharkov, at my university, we had an American textbook where we had to answer questions about what we are ready to do for the environment. Everybody laughed like it was the biggest joke in the world.
If I remember correctly, you happened to spend your youth is some kind of a rich kids school. And what you describe is what one gets in the environment consisting of kids of the rich, especially the new rich. In any country. My department chair's kids go to private school, and they are sometimes frowned upon because parents bring them to school in a Camry, not a Mercedes... I think you are extrapolating personal experience to the whole country.
My university classmates would not laugh at environmentalist ideas. They probably would not do much about the environment, as nearly all studied and worked simultaneously, but I can't imagine them laugh it it.
V.
"If I remember correctly, you happened to spend your youth is some kind of a rich kids school. And what you describe is what one gets in the environment consisting of kids of the rich, especially the new rich. "
-Yes, but this wasn't high school, this was at the university.
"They probably would not do much about the environment, as nearly all studied and worked simultaneously, but I can't imagine them laugh it it. "
-Such a different experience from mine. Nobody worked in my group at the university. I was the only one who worked and people despised and boycotted me for that all the time. Many of them were really poor at that point but even when I would offer them work, people would reject the idea as if I were offering something really bad.
And I also had a husband who thought that looking for a job was the most shameful thing in the world. :-)
Strange...
I met people from various parts of the FSU and most admitted to working one way or another during their student days. So I think your experiences are some strange aberration specific to your first university or department. Not something which could be blamed onto Soviet ways destroying the motivation and desire of people to work...
Speaking of gender differences - I guess 100% of my male classmates worked... (Or had some kind of business. Or, in some cases, were connected to the mafia, smuggling handguns into Russia.) Maybe there is something good about gender stereotypes... :)
V.
I mostly had female classmates. But even in my parents' generation, my father was the only one among my friends' fathers who kept working and even started his own business after the end of the USSR. In many families, both parents stopped working and the burden of keeping the entire family was on the grandparents.
But even today some of the Russian-speaking immigrants who are my age tell me: "Why do you work? What are you, an idiot? Don't you know you can get welfare and live on that?" (In Canada, of course).
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