Stereotypes (part 2)

Russians are all attractive - tall, blond, blue-eye people

Honestly, I have rarely been confronted to the “typical Slavonic type”: tall, blond, blue eye people, with a round face and a small triangular nose. Russia being partly European and Asiatic geographically; it is therefore inconceivable to make any generality of people with eventual physical concordances. From my point of view, Russian men aren’t so attractive as women, maybe because they don’t make many efforts in order to look clean, good, and attractive - except in the Russian capitals.

Russian Women = Russian Dolls

External appearances

Most women here aren’t as natural as in Europe: a lot of makeup, plastic surgery, various injections, fake nails, fake eyelashes, and dyed hair. They usually are unsatisfied with themselves, don’t love themselves nor accept themselves as they are; they are ready to do anything to get rid of their complexes. As a result, a big part of their salary goes to beauty salons and clinics. Accordingly, women often look more vulgar than pretty.

In contrast, it’s not rare to see a woman not epilated; they are usually not very young. Why? A habit: there was no depilation before Perestroika. Nowadays, a new tendency: women are looking for new technologies in anything (depilation, anti-cellulite massages, cosmetics), without worrying much on the eventual health consequences.

As far as I’m concerned, I find Ukrainians a lot more feminine and elegant than Russians, even if very artificial looking too.

Russians make just other priorities than us: better go to manicure than enjoy a piece of salmon for lunch - for women, and rent a small room, but drive the last BMW (bought on credit), dressed in Armani - for men.

clothes

Russian women pay a lot of attention on the way they look, maybe because of the competition that exists to find a man. (We’ll get to this question later on). Nevertheless, they don’t look at the quality of things and usually spend most of their salaries for things they would wear only a couple times (bad quality, uncomfortable). Also notice that the prices of clothes on sale are sometimes higher than in Europe without any discounts! About the stereotype of Russians women wearing a scarf on their head – yes they do, but only old ladies living in villages and all women in churches. If there is no scarf with you, you can find one at the entrance of almost every church.

flirt

Especially in discos, Russian girls don’t have any modesty not to charm a man in front of his girlfriend; of course, it depends on clubs.

The public in Russian clubs differs from the French one: for us, these places are usually for either very young people or for old ones. Here, there are more 30-40 year-old singles or old men looking for a young girl; in that case, you can feel sometimes uncomfortable about the way things are going.

Russian women are easy girls and prostitutes; if not, they are married but beaten by their husband

As this book doesn’t have the goal of being scientific, but based on life experiences, I won’t go deep on the subject of prostitution, as I was not so much confronted to it. As a matter of fact, it is unquestionable that various forms of prostitution exist here, like everywhere else. The unique additional place where prostitutes are invited to is banya. There exists a stereotype of Russian women getting married very young, having numerous kids, being violated by their husbands - from whom they’ll never get divorced; they’ll raise their own daughters up in a way that this lifestyle will be endlessly transmitted from a generation to another. I’ll talk about it later on, but just know that most of it is very close to reality.

Women want to marry a foreigner, to leave their country and live abroad forever, where they dream of a new life

The massive immigration of Russians to Europe (mostly women) occurred at the beginning of the 20th century; the nowadays situation is a bit different:

- many women married to an occidental go back home to live: they opened their eyes on the utopian and paradisiacal Europe and got disappointed, living unhappily as “a foreigner, far from family and friends, in a unfamiliar environment”

- most of them living abroad understood that being married to someone from another culture is not easy, particularly when you come from a country like Russia, where man and woman have clear and totally different roles in the society

Russian women are looking for a sponsor in a man. They want to make a family, totally taken in charge by men. They don’t always look for a millionaire, but for a man who earns enough money to give them the comfort needed, without worrying about it. Men don’t have to be occidental anymore then.

As far as easy-woman here, that’s the contrary: for the chagrin of many men, they’ll have to struggle a lot (flowers, restaurants and so on) before getting a girl into bed.

So I’m pointing out once more that I’m trying to break stereotypes here, which doesn’t mean that they are not sometimes reflecting a minimum reality...