Issue #02/57, January 28 - February 10, 1999  

by Matt Taibbi

You know how suicide attempts, particularly the botched ones, are sometimes called "cries for help"? Well, the same holds true for news articles. Sometimes, a reporter's intention isn't really to convey the news. Instead, he's sending out a personal distress call, begging for relief from the personal hell of his miserable, low-pay, often sexless existence.

It used to be that Jean MacKenzie of The Moscow Times/Boston Globe was the most conspicuously unhappy of Moscow's Western reporters. No more. Her place has been usurped by Anna Blundy, the new Times of London correspondent, who last week published an article that oozed such obvious bitterness and desperation that it might as well have been a perpetually unanswered personal ad in the back of Sagging Breast Weekly. You don't read between the lines in this piece--you read between the anger lines. I wouldn't bring it up in this column if it weren't for the fact that Blundy's article is a classic and easily dissectable example of one of the most pathetic-and oft-repeated-cliches of Russian reportage; the bitterly envious attack on Russian women--written by a Western woman--thinly and incompetently disguised as a tearful lament for the sad state of Russian feminism.

There are a few things that these "I feel sorry for the unemancipated Russian woman" stories all have in common. All describe with pity the Russian woman's frantic and ultimately unsuccessful efforts to attract men by dressing up in unflatteringly short skirts, clownishly thick makeup and obviously uncomfortable high heels. All confidently insist that in more advanced (i.e., Western) societies, men are universally attracted not by a woman's great tits and ass (or lack thereof), but her mind, sense of humor, and professional skill. And last but not least, no Russian woman described in any of these stories can end up happily married; if she has a Russian husband, he's invariably a wife-beater, while a Western husband is always portrayed as a soulless moron who keeps his brilliant, creative young Slavic wife enslaved in the kitchen while he sits in the next room watching Family Feud and happily leafing through his mutual fund statements.

Blundy's article scores on all three counts and more. She begins the piece with the tried-and-true "Three months on the job, and I still haven't left the lobby of the Radisson Slavyanskaya" lead:

"I was standing in the Slavyanskaya hotel last week waiting to get some dollars out of the bank. The Slavyanskaya looks like a flashy modern hotel anywhere in the world, except that the lobby is always overflowing with spectacularly beautiful prostitutes in furs and high-heeled boots, clacking past thuggish men in leather jackets who are forever slumped smoking in the leather armchairs."

Our Western female narrator has already introduced her entire cast of Russian characters: whores and thugs. Her Russia is already divided up into two distinct groups, the dissolute, desperate women she doesn't want to imitate, and the brutish men she doesn't want to sleep with. This is an important psychological technique: having rejected everybody, she insulates herself against rejection. She goes on:

"Prostitution of course existed under Communism, but since the perestroika years it has turned into the number one career choice for all the country's tall, thin and striking young women. Although technically illegal, the girls are paying their protection to everyone from the concierge to the police.

"In any other country these women would all be successful models, but in Russia only a very few are chosen by the burgeoning agencies and the process is tedious for women who, while they are waiting, can easily make enough to support their families for years to come. The hotel prostitutes are considered lucky because they have been born with something to sell."

Two points bear mentioning here. The first is that ANY hotel Blundy might visit ANYWHERE in the world would likely be teeming with prostitutes. Callgirls are simply part of the hotel business. It's the way life works, in and outside the Radisson. That men in New York fuck Columbia University students through an escort service rather than MGU students at the hotel bar, as they do in Russia, doesn't mean there's a substantial difference between the two countries.

Secondly, the idea that "in any other country, these women would all be successful models" is simply preposterous. If that's so, why are all the high-priced whores in other countries still screwing for money? Haven't they heard that they can all be successful models? Hey guys, help them out, OK? Next time you lay a whore outside Russia, tell her she should be modelling. Tell her she can contact Anna Blundy if she has career trouble.

The exercise in denial continues in the next paragraph:

"Wandering around Moscow, foreigners are always amazed at the number of attractive and well-groomed women pottering about the shops. This is because, despite 70 years of theoretical equality, the best a young Russian woman can hope for today is a rich husband or a large band of wealthy clients."

The first sentence of this paragraph should have read: "Wandering around Moscow, foreigners are always amazed to see women who, unlike those in their home countries, do not all have fat asses, formless clothes, and angry, makeupless faces." The rhetorical jump between Blundy's first and second sentences in this paragraph--which seems to suggest that women can't have equality with men and be "attractive and well-groomed" at the same time--says pretty much everything you need to know about why American-style feminism is such a hard sell to so many men.

It gets worse:

"These increasingly rare beasts [i.e., husbands, wealthy clients] are not lured in by wit, independence and good career prospects, but by the old chestnuts of lingerie, long hair and a winning pout."

Okay, well... Look, Anna, I hate to break this to you but, as a man who appreciates a good conversationalist as much as the next guy and given a choice between sleeping with Alice B. Toklas and a brainless bimbo with a shaved snapper and melon-sized tits, I'd take the bimbo any day. And ya know what? So will every other man in the entire world. I mean it, all of us. One hundred fucking percent. Call us shallow, but that's the deal. Those "beasts" you're talking about aren't "increasingly rare." They're all of us. And they always will be.

That's what's so sad about these "I feel sorry for the unemancipated Russian woman" pieces. They're not even ABOUT Russian women. Instead, they're a sort of desperate mantra these Western women are chanting, trying to reassure themselves that in their home countries, they still measure up. The fact is, Russian women--with their tight skirts, blowjob-ready lips, and swinging, meaty chests--scare the hell out of Western women. They know that if large numbers of them were ever to invade the placid, polite, lesbian-literature-and-designer-coffee dating scene of their home countries, they'd be priced right out of the market. Russian women may not be emancipated, which I think most of us agree is a terrible thing--but what they haven't gained in the professional world, they've at least retained in the sexual arena. Deep down, Western women like Blandy suspect they can't say the same thing.

That's what all these articles are about. They're an attempt to explain away the most troubling problem of Western women's liberation, which is that progress hasn't caused men to back away even slightly from viewing women purely as sex objects. Sure, we'll let you pay for half the sushi, and we've learned to avoid staring at your asses as blatantly as our fathers and grandfathers did, but that doesn't mean we actually prefer to see you dressed in painter's pants and sneakers or listen to you deconstruct Incan folk tales. No, we actually prefer Russian women, and that won't change, no matter how many times you insist you don't envy them.

Ironically, it's Blandy herself, through her own strikingly unattractive narrative, who gives, at the close of her piece, the best advertisement of all for Russian women:

"The most ordinary and least feminine-looking of women still squeezes herself into a short skirt, dyes her hair blonde and teeters around all winter in high heels simply because that is what women are supposed to do.

"It is taken for granted by men and women that females are for looking at and giving flowers to.

"Russian men are always baffled by the rebuffs they receive from foreign women, for they believe that to pay a woman a compliment (this can often take the form of gross lechery) is simply obligatory in polite society.

"'She was hideous. I just didn't want to be rude,' you hear them say, offended and confused. In a country trying to feed itself for the winter, feminism is still very much a luxury item."

Okay (and I'm laughing now, because this is so funny), so we're A) not supposed to give you flowers, B) pay you compliments, or C) look at you. Anything else? Because I'm struggling to figure out the reason why after hearing that, I'm feeling like I'd rather get fucked in the ass by a Cape Buffalo than ever have to sit through dinner with you. Maybe you can figure it out for me. When you do, let me know. I'll be at Natasha's house.