Two stories from the same day…
Russian immigrant morning fitness class instructor in response to question about what she does the rest of the day: “I do some personal training and also teach nutrition to people in their homes.” Nutrition? Don’t we all know what is healthy but (mostly) lack the willpower to eat that way? “My clients don’t know how to prepare and cook food. The other day I showed a woman in a beautiful house how to turn on the fan over her kitchen stove.” [i.e., she didn’t know how to turn on the $2000 range hood in her $100,000 dream kitchen]
Russian immigrant approached by 65-year-old native-born woman in rich suburb’s supermarket: “When a recipe calls for three cloves of garlic, does that mean three of these?” [holding up three complete garlic heads] (Previously this Russian woman, in her 30s, had expressed surprise that a 50-year-old American stay-at-home mom had no idea how to roast a whole chicken.)
Separately, on the subject of maternity leave, the 35-year-old fitness instructor will be having her third child soon. In response to a question about who will take over her classes she said “I’ll teach right until I give birth and then I’m taking two weeks off so I just won’t schedule classes for those days.” The stay-at-home moms in the class gasped in horror. She said “I took 10 days off the last time.” [She operates her own business and therefore would not benefit if the government were to order employers to provide company-paid maternity leave (in fact she would be worse off to the extent that she might one day hire employees and have to provide them with paid leave).]
Ah, Russian women. The beautiful shark-demons of the dating world… [moderator removed rest in accordance with http://philip.greenspun.com/blog/comment-moderation-policy/ ]
“she didn’t know how to turn on the $2000 range hood in her $100,000 dream kitchen”
I don’t know why this is surprising. Learning anything, even something as simple as where a switch is, takes time. If you are busy on the phone to your divorce attorney all the time trying to get more cash from your one-night-stand and co-parent (hahaha), there are a LOT of things you don’t have the time to learn. How to set the alarm clock, the alarm, the cruise control on your Lexus… the list is endless.
No, we do not know what is healthy. The advice from expert nutritionists gets regularly disproved by new studies.
Russian women are tough. Russians in general are tough people (look at their history, look at the climate). Because of communism, Russian women had more autonomy and upward mobility via education than western women (more was expected of them as well, since many were pushed to join the work force like men). Compare this to Western Germany, where women were not allowed to have a bank account in their own name without their husband’s permission until 1977!
Our everyday conveniences that evolved from consumer-driven capitalism have simply made basic skills like tailoring/sewing, growing vegetable gardens, baking and cooking unnecessary for many Americans and Westerners in general. Russians did not have access to Dishwashers/Fast Food/Sears/JCpenny/Supermarkets/etc until late the 1990’s. Don’t like the latest fall fashions in 1990s USSR? Then you had to sew your own clothes using Burda patterns. Having a birthday party and need a cake for next weekend? You would make it completely from scratch (forget even pre-boxed cake mix!). Need to feed your dog? No canned or dry dog food in the stores. Make some gruel for dog using old bones and kasha. Food stores are out of tomatoes/potatoes/onions/apples/etc? Grow your food at the dacha, and make preserves for the winter. TV antenna broke? Probably someone in your household would improvise with a hanger.
@A guy who knows better, in the end, all women are dangerous no matter the nationality, and it’s more a matter of what jurisdiction you live in that will determine how badly you’ll get screwed. I don’t think any man should beat himself up for making the mistake of getting hitched and then getting burned. Divorce is pretty common for one thing, and the laws are skewed to favor women anyway. Some people get into accidents and suffer life long injuries. Or have bad health. It’s just bad luck like anything else in life. Bad luck is just more common in marriage.
[moderator edited]
@GermanL’s points are right on target – necessity is indeed a mother of taking chances, diy mindset and natural resourcefulness. However, was that lack of access to the Western amenities that bad after all for women & their families in USSR? Cooking from scratch led to limited family exposure to additives of processed foods; growing veggies at one’s own dacha – >guaranteed organic healthy eating; no dishwashers -> reduced likelihood of children developing allergies (http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/early/2015/02/17/peds.2014-2968.full.pdf). Some time ago a bat managed to sneak in in my apartment, so I caught it and send back out (used a broom to knock it down and then placed into a fabric bag wearing cleaning gloves)- once I shared this story with maintenance- I was looked at with great surprise and commended on my ‘heroism’…I have to admit I see many American women around who can do just that as well (perhaps, because I do not live in a high-end suburban area with predominant housewives).
Now, discussing women at large is sort of pointless, …
Two sad tales from the opposite—or could they be same?—ends of the male/ female gender equality divide: the cattle market that are the modern mail-order brides of Kiev (the American men being cattle of a different kind, one with purchasing power); and a glimpse of the raw, unabashed hedonism-like-there-was-no-tomorrow of Moscow’s prime female tush commodities exchange immortalized henceforth by that flagship of High Consumerism that is Vanity Fair magazine (disclosure: of which I [then was] a long-time paying subscriber):
“[…] In this society, it is mainly the men who practice the commerce. The fairer sex works the angles. It is clear from talking to Karina and others that these girls are not cheap. Instead of fighting for the Western ideal of gender equality, which is not an option, they have become super-feminine, exerting all the power a brutally beautiful woman can bring to bear, which is not inconsiderable. […]”
—“A Foreign Affair” / Kristoffer A. Garin / Harper’s Magazine June 2006
—“Midnight in Moscow” / Brett Forrest / Vanity Fair July 2006
[edited by moderator: the original posting is about kitchen knowledge typically acquired in two different cultures, not about dating or sex]
ADMINISTRIVIA @moderator: while I don’t mind being edited out, I find it strange that anything remotely & mildly critical about this blog gets the treatment. The subscribers to the thread presumably have gotten the full version already. Also, if you’re going to cut in the middle of a paragraph, at least leave the preamble (“21 july 2006 ‘Girls from Petrovka'”) to which I had to write this postscript.
For the record: since I wrote the blogpost in 2006, the Vanity Fair magazine where I read it has removed the entire key paragraph from which I quoted some lines (edited out perhaps more than that, but I’m not about to diff the current against saved version). Fortunately, the original article is present on the author’s Brett Forrest’s own website. Here’s that missing paragraph taken from there, which is important in the context:
“[…] Karina, from Volgograd, is celebrating her birthday upstairs at the V.I.P. tables ringing the main dance hall. “All these girls come to Moscow,” she says, casting her eyes at the sea of women below, many of whom have traveled great distances to hunt oilmen and those who own banks. “They’re looking for a guy who will buy them a car and give them $100,000.” Karina flicks her blond hair and it kaleidoscopes through all available light. “Not me. I came here for $10 million.” In this society, it is mainly the men who practice the commerce. The fairer sex works the angles. It is clear from talking to Karina and others that these girls are not cheap. Instead of fighting for the Western ideal of gender equality, which is not an option, they have become super-feminine, exerting all the power a brutally beautiful woman can bring to bear, which is not inconsiderable. […]”
PS. I’ve met Russkiye like that, which in normal circumstances would be called “posh totty,” but, believe me, these were in a killer-femme class way above anything. No, I did not rate a second glance, and, boy, am I glad I didn’t! ;-))
Also, unlike the washed-out film, the book ‘Girl From Petrovka’ is quite racy and entertaining… literary on a par with “Mother Russia” by Robert Littell.