from russia with love

Of all of the things I thought I would never be writing about, Russian brides have to be near the top of the list. Sure, I'd heard all about war brides from my grandparents and it could be argued that my family lineage produced several byproducts of one of these unions, but I never really thought that international cross-culture dating would be addressed so matter-of-fact by internet dating services.

I recently ran across an opportunity to talk about a website and press release for LoversPlanet.com, a site that specializes in finding Russian brides for single men in the United States, Canada, and Australia. Their press release would likely excite the most undesirable bachelors, all the while infuriating any hardcore feminist, by making such bold statements as "Even young Russian women strive to create a family first and only afterwards they think about building a career, not visa versa."

I'm reminded of the old Eddie Murphy skit, where he claims to have married an African mail-order bride, who eventually becomes enlightened of her rights by her American housewife peers, and verbally assaults Eddie with the line, "What have you done for me lately?" Then, she proceeds to ask for a divorce, in which she is entitled to "HALF!" of everything.

While the skit was fictitious and assembled for a comedic response, it is easy to see how a mail-order bride may have her old-fashioned homeland ideals compromised by contemporary American liberties. What remains to be argued is whether having those ideals be compromised by American feminism is a good thing or not. While the press release for LoversPlanet portrays a typical Russian single woman as being the ultimate modern day Stepford wife, it is a dangerous idea for any singles site to include such blanket statements about any of their members. It's almost as if the single Russian women are screened in some way, and only accepted if they are domesticated enough.

I also question the statement that "A typical Russian woman looks like a model." How can anyone make such a bold statement about any race of people? Again, do they screen their single Russian females and only accept the ones who look like emaciated twelve year old boys (aka "models")? Or is this simply a play on the fact that there are all kinds of "models"? Tall and Fat models...short and petite models...bald models...etc. Taking this into consideration, one might make the assumption that the typical Russian woman looks like any other woman.

It's just very difficult to take a site like this seriously when they promise such lofty "Leave it to Beaver" standards of living from these potential housewives. I also find ti interesting that they say to "Browse profiles of these beautiful women, post your own ad (it's free)" and then a the bottom of the page they have an icon that says "We prefer PayPal". So if it is free, what do they prefer PayPal for? As an American male, I might be interested if I were single and something of a toad, and felt as though I was running out of options for finding true love. However, I sense that I would have to be quite naive to expect the cookie-cutter mold that they are projecting for their female Russian candidates.

My guess is that, like any dating service, every person is different and blanket statements will only hurt potential relationships by creating false expectations. In addition, one can never predict how someone will react to a barrage of unprecedented freedoms and new standards of living when they move to a new country.