Markets in everything

The manufacturing of beautiful Russian women:

Whatever you may say about the Soviet Union in the 1970s and '80s, it was not widely known for feminine pulchritude. Whatever you may say about women's professional tennis in the 1970s or '80s, it did not feature many players who looked like Maria Sharapova, the latest Australian Open victor.

Where were they all before?

Though this is a fairly frivolous question (OK, extremely frivolous), I am convinced it has an interesting answer. To put it bluntly, in the Soviet Union there was no market for female beauty. No fashion magazines featured beautiful women, since there weren't any fashion magazines. No TV series depended upon beautiful women for high ratings, since there weren't any ratings. There weren't many men rich enough to seek out beautiful women and marry them, and foreign men couldn't get the right sort of visa. There were a few film stars, of course, but some of the most famous—I'm thinking of Lyubov Orlova, alleged to be Stalin's favorite actress—were wholesome and cheerful rather than sultry and stunning. Unusual beauty, like unusual genius, was considered highly suspicious in the Soviet Union and its satellite people's republics.

This doesn't mean there weren't any beautiful women, of course, just that they didn't have the clothes or cosmetics to enhance their looks, and, far more important, they couldn't use their faces to launch international careers. Instead of gracing London drawing rooms, they stayed in Minsk, Omsk, or Alma Ata. Instead of couture, they wore cheap polyester. They could become assembly-line forewomen, Communist Party bosses, even local femmes fatales, but not Vogue cover girls. They didn't even dream of becoming Vogue cover girls, since very few had ever seen an edition of Vogue.

Comments

Having lived there, this is one thing you would be better to go to Russia and understand. If you walk down the street in Russia you might not get to see too many beauties. Most are in the black Mercedes Benzes that zip by on the boulevard. But in smaller towns they still exist.

Actually, I would say Russian women are comparatively more beautiful because the 'Russian' body and facial features are very close to the propagandized Western Standard - thin, tall, with high cheeks and almond shaped eyes, more blue eyes than average, straight noses. I won't lie, I find them very attractive.

Interestingly, areolae are another topic. In the summer many women don't wear bras and so you see many different kinds. Non-western, non-pornofied. You get an appreciation of the variance of human nipples.

Russia will open your eyes. To bad I was too young to visit Soviet Russia.

Posted by Richard Pointer | January 29, 2008 12:19 PM

Maria Sharapova moved to Florida at the age of seven. But perhaps we shouldn't let facts get in the way of a good (frivolous) story.

Posted by Trieu | January 29, 2008 1:10 PM

According to a semi-serious theory, the extremely high death rate of Russian men during World War II contributed to the contemporary beauty of Russian women via a sort of highly sped-up natural selection process.

Posted by Peter | January 29, 2008 1:21 PM

Markets in "manufacturing" beautiful Russian women? Are you serious? Not a good title. "Mail order Russian bride" scams abound and that's the first thing that came to my mind.

One of the historical symbols of Russian women to foreign eyes is the old babushka. As far as I'm concerned, the more Anna Kournikovas and Maria Sharapovas arrive to dispel that image, the better.

Posted by liberalrob | January 29, 2008 2:30 PM

The post completely ignores CallGirl spies and the like; googling for that is left as an exercise.

Posted by TLB | January 29, 2008 3:47 PM

Wow, Trieu, you're smarter than everybody! Too bad your point does nothing to discredit Applebaum's thesis as by moving to Florida Sharapova also entered a place with a "market for beauty". A glib, sarcastic pedant, eh? You must be a devil with the ladies.

Posted by sydbarrett | January 29, 2008 4:11 PM

areolae are another topic

A Fascinating topic. Can you tell us more? Details?

Posted by Brian | January 29, 2008 6:56 PM

We're talking about two linked but distinct phenomena here. On the one hand, we have the lust for capitalist fashion on the part of Soviet-era women and men, and the inability of the command economy, with production untethered from demand, to respond effectively to ever-shifting desires for physical beauty. The inability of production to respond to consumer demand, and the resulting undereducation of the consumer in an impoverished fashion landscape, creates a kind of retardation of the fashion system. The lust and envy for capitalist clothes, cosmetics, and body imagery filtering in through the media was a significant driver in the collapse of Soviet Communism.

On the other hand, in the aftermath of Soviet Communism's collapse, there was no check in the Russian moral imagination on the commodification of anything, including female physical beauty. Post-Communist rhetoric celebrated commodofication as an unalloyed good. (The materialism of Communist moral philosophy, and the vague and rather useless spirituality of available religious alternatives, contributed to the vacuum.) Feminism had been partially discredited by 75 years of women being expected to work construction jobs and raise kids at the same time. The inegalitarianism of a high appreciation for physical beauty was no drawback; in the new society, inequality was good. Russia went overboard on capitalism just as it had gone overboard on socialism. There was no Western-style sense of guilt at the idea that one might like someone more because she was physically attractive. No such excuses were necessary.

Meanwhile, as we all know, the collapse of Eastern European economies created, in market enthusiasts' terms, a large supply of white women eager to perform tasks much desired by richer, usually foreign men, at very low wages.

The dramatically increased premium on female beauty in Russian society, included expat Russian society, is driven by all of these factors. There is a strong continuum between the advent of the Natashas in Japanese businessmen's clubs, the advent of the Natashas on the courts of the Australian Open, and the advent of the Natashas in New York and London corporate boardrooms.

I see the moral dimension in this shift as rather bittersweet; for those of us who sympathized with Russians' longing for Western fashion in 1989, it's a case of "be careful what you wish for". Anne Applebaum, however, is lucky: her moral imagination has remained frozen in 1989.

Posted by brooksfoe | January 29, 2008 8:55 PM

It is probably worth pointing out that young people in the Soviet Union tended to be thin or at the very least, not overweight. Presumably this was connected to diet and lack of car culture. Apearence is a lagging indicator in this respect - metabolism seems to be sensitive to diet and life style early in life. My impression from visiting Russia periodically from 1994-2007 is that dietary changes (more processed foods, more junk food, more beer) are causing noticable weight gain. This is particularly conspicuous with the young men (who often drink huge amounts of beer) but seems true of women too to a lesser extent.

I seriously doubt that Russian women got significantly more attractive in 1991 -rather the steoretypes just flipped because of the end of the cold war. It probably is the case that before the 1960s or so, ordinary people there tended to be less attractive than today because of very poor material conditions (like famine during collectivization and the war) when growing up.

Cosmetics and such tend to be overused there (at least according to my taste) and ordinary people don't have huge amounts of money to blow on fancy clothes, so I don't think that this is what is going on.

Probably asking actual Russians what they think would be a more valuable datapoint. Today they tend to claim that their women are more attractive (even when conceeding that virtually everything else about the country sucks). Not sure whether this was true in late Soviet times among those who traveled. I wouldn't really be surprised if it was.

Also Appelbuam tends to be anti-Russian (her husband is the Polish foreign minister, I think), and generally holds pretty silly views for someone who is supposedly an expert.

Posted by Observer | January 29, 2008 11:03 PM

Anybody remember Wendy's "Soviet Fashion Show" tv commercial from the early '80s?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5CaMUfxVJVQ

Posted by Rob Leder | January 29, 2008 11:06 PM

By the way, the "no market for female beauty" line is pretty funny. What is even funnier is that Applebaum can apparently write it with a straight face. What is not funny is that Slate publishes stuff that self-evidently stupid. Being the prettiest girl in the village is a pretty big deal regardless of whether anyone there reads Vogue and some women actually care about attracting a husband for reasons other than his bank account (imagine that!). Then there is the fact that being amazingly good at hitting a tennis ball is only very, very tenuously related to being strikingly beautiful so she ends up with an explaination that has nothing to do with the example she started with.

Her ignorence of Soviet popular culture is also pretty remarkable. I mean, I understand why one would want to ignore a lot of it, but she pretends that it doesn't exist.

Posted by Observer | January 30, 2008 12:41 AM

I was in Moscow in 1992 just after the fall of communism. I rode the Moscow subway often and what struck me was that many of the women were extremely attractive and well dressed. The men, however, were pretty much all slobs. It was quite a contrast.

Posted by Larry, SF | January 30, 2008 3:02 AM

I was in Moscow in 1992 just after the fall of communism. I rode the Moscow subway often and what struck me was that many of the women were extremely attractive and well dressed. The men, however, were pretty much all slobs. It was quite a contrast.

Posted by Larry, SF | January 30, 2008 3:05 AM

Being the prettiest girl in the village is a pretty big deal regardless of whether anyone there reads Vogue

On the other hand, being the prettiest girl in the village is probably not, by itself, going to get you known throughout the Western world.

Nor will it buy you the makeup, beauty therapy and personally-tailored clothing used by Western models.

some women actually care about attracting a husband for reasons other than his bank account (imagine that!).

I think a rather more relevant point is that some men are not purely interested in looks. But I think there is reasonable evidence that a lot of men are interested in looks to at least some degree. Therefore a woman looking to attract men, or an advertiser looking to attract customers, has an interest in beauty.

Then there is the fact that being amazingly good at hitting a tennis ball is only very, very tenuously related to being strikingly beautiful

On the other hand, being amazingly good at hitting a tennis ball brings money that can be spent on becoming strikingly beautiful.

And if you are amazingly good at tennis, and strikingly beautiful, it's easier to get sponsorship that pays for the resources to push you into the very top numbers.

Posted by Tracy W | January 30, 2008 8:35 AM

I have had thoughts along similar lines regarding black women in the U.S. Twenty or thirty years ago I didn't see that many that I found particularly attractive. Now I see many. Today, I would say that I see attractivess in the same percentage of black women as white women.

I have thought about why this is the case. I don't think it is because I or society have changed their attitudes on race and beauty. I think it's because black women really are more attractive than they used to be. The reason, simply, is because they are wealthier than in the past and can afford the clothes, cosmetics and other factors that enhance female beauty.

I'd be curious as to whether other white men have had a similar change in outlook. I suppose I should also mention that black men also look better for the same reasons. But being hetero, this isn't something I've paid the same attention to. Perhaps some gay men may wish to comment.

Posted by Bruce Bartlett | January 31, 2008 2:36 PM