I like to think I’m not easily flustered, BUT

Jill’s re-naming of Russia’s “National Conception Day” as “National Russians Fuck Like Cold, Pale Rabbits In Furry Hats Day” was pretty damn silly. Maybe I’m still smarting over the “when you all die out” comment – but I thought that “Blades of Glory” did a much better job with an former-Soviet-bloc ethnic joke, wherein the stalker character talked about confronting people who carry guns and smell like soup (well, they were making fun of Ukraine there, but we’re interchangeable to most people, really).

I laughed out loud at “Blades of Glory,” and when I read Jill’s thing, the only thing I could think of was “if she made a similar comment about another nationality, I bet there’d be an outcry.” Maybe this is because Jill was trying to be funny while talking about a serious, even painful issue (for me – and anyway I’m a hypocrite, I make fun of serious, painful issues all the time). Dunno. I can gaze at my navel and try to figure out what’s really rubbing me the wrong way here, and if I’m just being a humourless weirdo, but the navel isn’t speaking back to me anyway.

Meanwhile Russia, as the biggest country in the world, is facing a demographics crisis of truly unsettling proportions – and yes, it is something to worry about for such an enormous nation. More importantly – most of my Russian friends are desperate to have kids (I know very few child-free people from Russia, whether by luck of the draw, or whatever), but are unable to do so due to a lack of funds and government support – and yes, a fridge is a very, very practical present for a young family. The political motivation behind National Conception Day this may be twisted – but that sure as hell will not matter to people who cannot afford their own damn appliances.

Jill says:

I can’t get behind policy that promotes childbearing in order to score a new fridge.

Try living without one. Try living in Russia, actually.

While Americans pontificate, Russians have to go on with their lives.

Finally, not all Russians are pale (I don’t really think that Jill thinks so, but, you know, just in case; am always looking out for you, Jill). As I’ve already mentioned – Russia is the biggest country in the world. A huge number of different ethnicities are citizens of Russia, not just Slavs. Hell, my Russian mother looks Greek. One of her sisters looks Mongolian. Their grandfather looked Chechen.

The furry hats are great, especially when it hits -40.

I know, I know, you must be thinking – who possibly needs a fridge then? 😉

On believing

No American, or, for that matter, Ukrainian (Russian, ex-Soviet, whatever) person I know has brushed me off when I talked about that one New Year’s Eve. The Special New Year’s Eve. Special for many reasons, but here is the obvious one – the one that involved me getting surrounded by friends of friends on a stairwell, and being called a “vulgar American” and, even, “pig” (“But I’m just drunk and trying to make a joke” – didn’t cut it, when I started crying.). This had been a Good Party, thrown by a Good Girl. It had been a party with guitars and singing and pricey champagne. I walked out of it, at six in the morning in torn stockings and a none-too-warm coat, and kept walking for miles, because everything, everything – even the trash on the sidewalk and the hungover gas station attendant’s belaboured whistling, was better than a Good Party, with Good Kids like that.

“Well, I’m not surprised!” My old friend from primary school told me later. “Shit happens. There are enough morons to fill nearly the whole of Kreschatik on every weekend. And half of them have diplomas!”

Similar stories involving Americans get a variety of responses (even if you’re talking to someone you consider a good friend) – some of them unpleasant. I’m all for diversity of thought, but …. It makes you wonder.

Sometimes it’s OK to feel wronged. I’m getting used to that idea right now. Where to go from here? Hmmm… To Kreschatik, I suppose. 😉

Smell sweet, and carry a big stick

Off her feet with the crumbs she throws you.

– Kim Carnes.

My grandmother was never what you would call a stereotypically attractive woman. She had no shortage of “gentlemen suitors,” but she was no beauty. She was just endearingly herself. She was loud, direct, well-organized, good-humoured, and confident. Instead of being shy on account of her enormous bosoms, she stuck them out like a pair of torpedoes. And she was always very well put-together, as I’ve written before. She wasn’t adventurous with her appearance, but she was meticulous and professional – low-heeled leather shoes, neat bun, polka-dotted frock, and, if she was going a little wild, purple lipstick. Her well-starched, spotless white coat was thrown over this ensemble with the studied carelessness of a soldier’s standard-issue jacket over a rakish uniform. Moving through the hospital halls, and various government offices, Doctor Antonova was a tank.

My grandmother also lived through the Nazi occupation of Ukraine. One of the things she tells me about it now is how she always took great care to “not appear vulnerable” to the Nazi soldiers. She was obsessed with “looking OK”: standing up straight, being well-scrubbed and clean, having well-brushed hair, neatly mended clothes. The Nazis picked on you if you looked vulnerable, she claimed. Meanwhile, the female volunteer/partisan was part of war-time imagery for little girls, as were the mothers of the male soldiers – by turns terrified and defiant. The fighting women, however, were always defiant – and always feminine. The uniform included a skirt pulled over tall, black boots. A plucked eyebrow was eternally cocked over the eternally gleaming eye. My grandmother heard of such women.

When I think about my relationship with my own appearance, I think about my grandmother. I’ve already written why. But that was not the whole “why.” The whole why has to do with the way I developed as a child. When did I start caring about the way I looked? Was I converted by magazines and TV? No, it began much earlier than that. It started with my first experiences of violence, with my desire to become a tank.

Feeling guilty, feeling liquefied and diminished and weak, I was determined not to let anyone find out as to what was happening inside. I had to appear as though everything was fine. So began my obsession with my looks. I brushed my hair carefully. I sat in front of the mirror, and adopted different expressions – calm, calmer, calmest. Angry, angrier, angriest. I was religious about fitting in, looking normal. And, I was also obsessed with a WWII movie – “A Zori Zdes’ Tikhie.” I remember wanting to be like the women in it – steely, gorgeous, recklessly brave.

My appearance became my armour. As I grew up, I endlessly cultivated different styles and looks. Every outfit was a performance in and of itself, even if it was a muted perfomance. A carefully-planned outfit figured into any important occasion, even if I’d spent a good hour trying to figure out how to not make it look planned in any way. Just like in writing, letting the seams show was a no-no. And is to this day, I think.

Perhaps this is why so much of feminist critique on beauty standards and grooming rituals seems to slide by me like drab countryside through a car window. So much of it I can no longer relate to, now that I’ve gotten to know myself more. It doesn’t invalidate most of the things that feminists say about beauty culture, it just makes me feel a bit cut off from the discussion (so, naturally, I start my own). Sure, I still very much like to blame my insecurities on some guy fawning over pictures of Nicole Ritchie on the E! Channel. Alternatively, I get pissed off at the idea that a $50 skin cream will somehow smooth out all my worries and scars, internal and external. I still snark at men who give women a hard time for simply wanting to do their own damn thing. And, on the flip-side, so much of me still very much needs to fit in.

But this need to fit in, it did not originate with the media. The media fed on it, the media inflamed it, but didn’t create it. Not in my case, anyway. I am not one of Lenin’s “masses,” or I try not to be, and so I don’t speak for anyone but me.

Am I a conformist? Hell yes. I like wearing the standard-issue mask of femininity. I’m rather romantic about it. Am I privileged? Damn straight I am. I’ve also gone through the self-doubt, I’ve gone through wondering if I can, or should, be someone I’m not.

I’ve gone through rejecting my mother, who claimed my deliberately unkempt appearance at the start of fall break freshman year was a sign of “disrespect,” as both oppressor and victim. Until I remembered, that is, that my mother’s mother lived through the war as well. And what they struggled to preserve, which was such a crooked thing, such an imperfect and improbable and strange and cruel thing, this whole entire Soviet shebang, was still important to them, no matter how much it was deconstructed and re-framed. My mother, my grandmothers – were terrified of the possibility that I would reject them, cut them off, take every single one of their traditions and mercilessly chuck them out. Appearance played a part in this. Appearance existed instead of the bulletproof vest, which had taken too long to invent. Appearance was pride, the rueful smile at the execution wall, the final “fuck you” before the curtain call.

I looked at these women, and thought to myself that this is what we have, this tradition of femininity that links us together, that exists far outside the babble on TV. This weird, perilous, ridiculous tradition – that felt like coming home to me. And I ended up choosing it for myself all over again, being older now and maybe even a little bit wiser.

And I still choose it.

Of course, there’s more to it than that. I also approach the idea of physical appearance as an artist, or try to, anyway. But that’s a whole other story, for a different bedtime.

My Special Evening

A few months ago, I had, as the title of this little essay implies, a very Special Evening.

I sat next to a young, seemingly sane, New York intellectual at a dinner table. For about an hour and a half, I listened to him as he talked about the fact that “‘Ukrainian women are basically subhuman sluts who don’t know what’s good for them. Oh, and you should all die.”

Of course, he didn’t say it quite that way. No, he took the elaborate route – throwing in words like “hegemony” and “dissasociation.” Yet the conclusion he arrived to was pretty much in tune with the subhuman slut argument, because, at the end of our Special Evening, he turned to me and said that:

“When all of you Slavs die out, there’ll be more room for my people.”

Such pathos. Although I’m not really sure what he meant by that. Who are these mythical “my people”? Academics? New Yorkers? Jews? (He said he was Jewish) – I certainly hope he didn’t mean Jews, because all those visions of Lebensraum create a painful cognitive dissonance.

Either way, the message was clear.

Now, this Special Gentleman’s problem with Ukrainian women (the problem that frustrated him so much that he’s ready to see an entire ethnicity die out) was simple – they dress too sexy. This is something I can partially agree with – women in Ukraine are pressured to doll themselves up for virtually any occasion, even if it’s just walking to the pharmacy for some tampons (I know I do it). There are many women who examine this practice, and many more who don’t. However, not all women who examine it arrive at the same conclusions. Some, like me, have some pretty strong cultural identifications with make-up and heels alongside the notion that conformity scores you points (it does).

But that doesn’t matter. We’re just sluts. Sluts who, according to the Special Gentlemen “get jobs based on the way they look.” Especially the one slut whom he met in an office earlier that morning, the one who was “so incompetent that she was clearly hired for her looks.” Because after spending five minutes with her, he surely understood every nuance of her situation.

There was another woman, sitting a few seats at our table, and when she got up for a cigarette, Special Gentleman said, with a Jerry Falwell-like fake grin, that “she’s certainly not afraid to show how good-looking she is.” The woman was wearing a black dress, rather conservatively cut on top, but short. Oh and some heels. Nothing that, say, a woman from New York wouldn’t wear to an informal social gathering at a trendy restaurant. As a Ukrainian, however, the woman in question did not get a free pass.

I’m always quick to defend Western criticism of Ukrainian culture and society. I believe that most people mean well. I like to think that they see the real issues that people here struggle with everyday, and sincerely want to lend a hand. I also like to think that down the road, Ukrainian women won’t be judged on their appearance period – no matter how they wish to dress (my scary, black, liquidy eyeliner – my choice, that’s the road I’ll probably take), and looking stereotypically “hot” won’t be a requirement in a number of office jobs (Although let’s go on an educational tanget: most serious businessmen and businesswomen I know would not hire a female secretary or an assistant simply for her looks. Being young and attractive can work against you in trying to land that job, even in Evil Ukraine. Young and attractive will often translate as “distracting to clients,” or “not old enough to take on the responsibility,” and so on. Most offices I regularly visit prefer to hire matronly older women, or snappily-dressed young men, for this sort of job.).

And so it breaks my heart to be confronted with blatant hate. It hurts especially because people like Special Gentleman – and I wish he was the only one who had said similar things to me – are not at all awkward about conveying these views to me. After all, I’m “in the club.” I, of all people on this good earth, surely must understand where they’re coming from. I was educated in the United States, I’m “safe,” I’m “OK,” I’m not “one of them.” It’s OK to invite me to watch as my home, and the people I love, are getting shat on from the lofty heights of racism masquerading as academic critique.

I always end up feeling particularly ashamed of these situations, because I just don’t know how to respond. I don’t want to appear to emotionally invested, I try to laugh it off, when all I really want to do is throw my drink at this person’s smug face, letting it stain his nice, modest, oh-so-understated-and-tasteful little pullover, and storm out. Or slap the smug face, and storm out. Or overturn a couple of chairs, and storm out.

Neither can I argue with Special Gentlemen really well. Deep down inside, I just don’t believe that they’re saying what they’re actually saying. Only after I grab a taxi for home, and ride back with a vague, queasy feeling in the pit of my stomach do I begin to realize that oh my God, this actually happened.

When it is happening, I smile a lot. I play with my rings. I try to offer civilized, convoluted, apologetic, pathetic rebuttals. I keep grinning like an idiot, as if I’m afraid to break some spell. I don’t want to get angry, because angry would signal that I care, and how could I possibly let someone know that I care? He’ll call me defensive. He’ll call me an apologist. He’ll fly home with pride and sense of entitlement intact.

I’ll be left with my impotent rage. I’ll be left with that strange, sick feeling. The slimy feeling. Like stepping into spit with a bare foot that trusts in the integrity of the ground below it.

(GOD. Would working on my right-hook in preparation for another Special Evening – they do seem to repeat themselves – be hugely hypocritical in relation to my commitment to non-violence, or just a little bit so?)