picking cichorium

Caught in a downpour of merciless autumn rain in Poltava, Ukraine, I ran into the first café I noticed.  There I found a not-so-cozy seat on a tall stool overlooking one of the main streets. The street is nothing special, just streams of water and cars. Fortunately the interior design of the place is entertaining an array of thoughts; a personification of one sociological phenomenon of Eastern Europe, it has hit an old wound. The blue sign over the sky scraper on the decoration announces “SIGNORITA BIKINI & GODZILLA,”and the bubble above the girl’s head states in Ukrainian “A road to a man’s heart.”

Women’s position in Ukraine infuriates and puzzles me. I observe left and right various manifestations of female objectification; it jumps at me even from the high school courses and national news edition! Women are often simply an entertainment, an aid or a potential sexual partner for the night. “You cannot come dance at a club for fun, females are only let in if they look and behave like they want to be picked up,” complains a female friend who lives in Kiev. Many girls are raised with “X or nobody will take you as a wife,” where X may vary from a necessity to look a certain way or to perform a certain housekeeping duty. Caring for a man and pleasing a man seems to be among top priorities of a girl. Wearing clothing on the borderline between sexy and slutty even to a workplace at a bank or school is a norm. No wonder I hear from the foreigners that Eastern European women are the best: they are hot and well kept, they cook and clean, they raise children and don’t say a word against their husbands’ whims – a mix of Barbie dolls with vacuum cleaners.
On the other hand, often working with the teenagers, I have noticed that mostly girls take acute interest in extra school work and non-traditional educational opportunities, mostly girls show up to talks and presentations, mostly girls take top ranking spots in their schools. Why then, 10 years down the road, it is men who run the majority of businesses, make most money and constitute the majority of the political force in the country? When and how do these social groups swap the roles? I might have stumbled on an answer in a conversation with a recently married female friend. She had a hard time switching jobs after marriage since the new employer has pointed out to her that he would prefer for her to stay away from having children. Childbearing seems to knock most women completely out of the labor market.
Not once and not twice did I observe a godzilla strolling down the street with a hottie 20 cm taller and/or 20 years younger than him. Where these couples are an exception on the streets of New York or Berlin, they seem to be a typical sight in Kiev. Strangely, the early soviet ideological writings and practices highlighted women’s equality as comrades; looks like not only the economic beliefs have gone extinct in Eastern Europe over the last 90 years.