A race between women running in high heels took place on Moscow’s Red Square:
Here is another picture:
About 100 women participated in the race to win $3,500 to spend at a fashion store.
I’m not even Russian but I feel hugely embarrassed for these women.
Clarissa's Blog 
That looks like a ridiculously dangerous thing to do!!!! :S
So many possibilities for twisted ankles and worse.
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I know! This is why I feel so bad about this. What kind of a fool would do something like that?
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Usually, when you see that many people prancing around in ridiculous footwear and skimpy clothing in Victoria, it’s a Gay Pride parade. 🙂
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It will be a happy day for me when a Pride will take place in the Red Square and the police will not start beating up the participants. Russia is still very far away from civilization.
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You should check out the Latvian blonde parade for cultural comparison.
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They are laughing and having fun, I think you should be embarrassed because youre embarrassed.
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Ive noticed that the trend to tell me what I “should ” do intensifies on Saturdays. Every Saturday somebody comes up with a bizarre comment that ends with unsolicited advice.
Weird.
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Ok, Im embarrassed for you that you are embarrassed that some women in high heels are having fun. 😉
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“Ok, Im embarrassed for you that you are embarrassed that some women in high heels are having fun”
– And Sunday is a day when people demonstrate they have poor reading skills. OK, please show where I said I’m embarrassed that anybody is having fun.
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I’m not even Russian but I feel hugely embarrassed for these women.(Clarissa)
My bad, I just assumed this is what you meant. Umm, and what did you mean? 😉
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Maybe you should stop assuming and start paying attention.
This has all been explained in the thread already. I’m bothered by the image of Russian-speaking women as stupid, brainless, cheap whores because this image gets applied to me. I can’t blame those who apply this stereotype because my compatriots do everything they can to reaffirm it. This makes me angry. I spend my life paying for the sins of these idiots. Can I at least vent my frustration on my own blog? Or does that bother you too much?
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I’m bothered by the image of Russian-speaking women as stupid, brainless, cheap whores because this image gets applied to me. I can’t blame those who apply this stereotype because my compatriots do everything they can to reaffirm it.(Clarissa)
Oh I see, youre not assuming too much about these women who are smiling and doing something silly. Youre just umm, uhh………what would you call what youre doing. Ah yes, Judging based on your standards. Does it bother you much that I point out your silliness. Like the rest of us, I think you have enough of your own sins to work on. 😉
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“Judging based on your standards.”
– Gosh, I’m getting a feeling that soon you will realize that the header of this blog (“an academic’s opinions. . .”) will actually mean that I’m offering my opinions here. Of course, I’m judging based on my standards. Did you expect me to judge based on yours? Or somebody else’s entirely?
“Like the rest of us, I think you have enough of your own sins to work on. ”
– I have a feeling that another round of boring unsolicited advice is forthcoming. Are we stuck on a Saturday, or something?
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– I have a feeling that another round of boring unsolicited advice is forthcoming(Clarissa)
Thats why its called blogging, lol. Like you I just gotta be real. 🙂
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@ Tft: If you look at that photo and just see “women having fun” I really understand why you are so uncomfortable with the term patriarchy. It seems like you support those norms……As a small opening caveat, I love wearing high heels. During the summer I tend to wear flip flops but once fall begins, it’s rare to find me in a pair of flats. I think high heels are beautiful and I feel beautiful when I wear them……… BUT I completely understand that I can’t RUN in heels…..especially not the 4-5 inch heels which many of these women are wearing. I depart from Clarissa a bit becuase where she gets angry and disgusted, I feel sadness and sympathy. These women are risking their ankles and quite possibly their necks in order to win a shopping certificate? There are fulfilling patriarchal fantasies as they “have fun”: “attractive” women need to be sexually appealing EVEN when running and “attractive” women hold shopping as the highest good. I would bet good money that most of those women are in terrible relationships and have low self esteem. Women like that support the patriarchy because they are (more than likely) removing themselves from the possibility of economic or political power. It’s very sad and very far from fun.
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“Women like that support the patriarchy because they are (more than likely) removing themselves from the possibility of economic or political power.”
– Exactly. And this is in a country where women have had an enormous amount of power (within the family, educationally, in the work place, culturally) compared to their Western sisters during the XXth century. They could have used those gains to advance. Instead, they collectively chose to regress. They bought into the Western myths, but not the good ones. 😦 I’ve seen this collective abandonment of women by the gains made for them by their mothers and grandmothers with my own eyes. In 1991, over 90% of female high school students in Moscow said that the job of their dreams was that of a prostitute.
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—And this is in a country where women have had an enormous amount of power (within the family, educationally, in the work place, culturally) compared to their Western sisters
I dare to disagree. Most of that power existed only on paper. Consider, for example, a female medical doctor. If you say “female medical doctor” to a Westerner, they get certain picture in their mind, based on their Western experience. That would be a highly educated person, with high social status, and high salary. In SU reality that would likely be a person earning less than a factory worker, with low social status, experiencing glass ceiling at her workplace, and expected by her family to take care of 90% of the household chores, and 90% of the childcare… It does not surprise me at all that so many FSU women bought into “Western myths, but not the good ones”…
And i was 30%, not 90%… But still a horrible number.
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Are you disagreeing that Soviet women were more liberated than the American women in the XXth century? Yes, they did all the housework. So did the American women. Yet, at the same time, our women all had jobs, all decided how many children they would have, all had their own money, none depended on men to get a clothing allowance, the majority had exclusive power over the family finances. What Friedan describes in as existing in the 50s and 60s, did not exist in our countries since 1917.
How many Soviet women do you know who haven’t had a single working woman in their family? I know several American women like that. One is my former BFF I wrote about recently.
Among the women in the photos, 100% had working mothers, grandmothers, and greatgrandmothers. Yes, the were not all in amazing jobs. But they hjad jobs. You’ll be hard-pressed to find such a group of American women anywhere. Because they don’t exist.
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@Evelina
Well, I definately dont have a confirmation bias to see it from your oppressive patriarchal fantasy. Sometimes a potato is just a potato. I definately dont see a group of women like the ones so colourfully described by Clarissa,
“I’m bothered by the image of Russian-speaking women as stupid, brainless, cheap whores”
Interesting how nobody seems to have called her out on that one! The fact of the matter is that any one of those women could be educated and very self determining individuals who are just having plain old silly fun. But I do realize its so much more dramatic to see the “patriarchy” at work.
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“Interesting how nobody seems to have called her out on that one!”
– On what? On having an opinion about the image of my ethnic group?
“The fact of the matter is that any one of those women could be educated and very self determining individuals”
– Have you read the thread? That’s precisely what we are saying. These women all probably have a very good income and a lot of power. The problem here is that they choose to present themselves to the world as brainless twats. We are now analyzing the reasons behind that choice.
I’m sorry, are you sure that you have enough knowledge of the FSU countries to enable you to participate in this discussion?
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I have enough brains to realize that if it was a man making the statement ““I’m bothered by the image of Russian-speaking women as stupid, brainless, cheap whores” we’d be having a very different conversation.
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“I have enough brains to realize that if it was a man making the statement ““I’m bothered by the image of Russian-speaking women as stupid, brainless, cheap whores” we’d be having a very different conversation.”
– Yes, since he is not a Russian-speaking woman, that preoccupation would seem quite bizarre. So?
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@TfT: The only people who think that a “potato is just a potato” are potato farmers. Ask someone who works in the fields–picking in the hot sun and making a substandard wage–. They probably don’t think a “potato is just a potato.” Ask those who bought in to the “All American meat and potatoes diet” (which is pushed and advertised by a powerful farming lobby) and now have diabetes. They probably don’t think “a potato is just a potato” either. In other words, only those who benefits from a system refuse to see what motivates the system and who profits/ loses by that system. Everything means something. So it’s important to ask why a group of women are putting their bodies (and self esteems) in danger for the dubious prize of a store gift card.
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” Everything means something.”
– Exactly. Everything is a text if you know how to read. Even a potato.
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—Are you disagreeing that Soviet women were more liberated than the American women in the XXth century?
I am saying that many FSU women may not care what middle-class Western feminist theoreticians consider “liberating”. FSU women may have felt that HAVING to work, especially in jobs they did not like for low pay AND having to do 90% of household chores and childcare was not liberating at all.
See, communists did not “free the women” as a result of some women’s movement. They “freed the women” in their (I mean – communists’) own interests. Industrialization, etc… But the culture remained deeply patriarchal.
In the West there was evolution, and as you can see the success it pretty mixed, after all those years. But there was no evolution of the same kind in the FSU. Government just gave people “rights” which in fact were responsibilities…
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Yet, our women had their own finances, their own lives outside the home, their own reproductive choices. We saw active, strong, decisive women everywhere, including on the movie and TV screen.
The only reason why I find it so easy to speak my mind and handle male colleagues and bosses is because generations of women before me did that work for me. Can you imagine what it must feel like to be the first woman in your family to have a job? A position of responsibility? I think I have quoted excerpts of these wilting flowers who bat their eyelashes and try to be useful when men insult them in a professional context. But I’m sure that their great-granddaughters will know how to make themselves respected in the workplace just as well as I do. That will only take about 60 more years.
This is also why I find it so easy to share household responsibilities with my husband equally while crowds of women are complaining on feminist blogs how they find it so hugely impossible to get their male partners to “help around the house.” My mother never let my father do anything around the house. But I know how easily she could have turned everything around. Learning such things completely on your own must be extremely difficult.
“I am saying that many FSU women may not care what middle-class Western feminist theoreticians consider “liberating”.”
– This is not about theory. Try living for a year with absolutely no money of your own and no existence outside of the home. Women are human beings. Such an existence can only be extremely degrading and stifling to any human being.
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So it’s important to ask why a group of women are putting their bodies (and self esteems) in danger for the dubious prize of a store gift card.(Evelina)
Ummm, maybe a group of women who like to laugh and do silly challenges. Though I am assuming that as a possibility, kind of like you assuming a WHOLE bunch of stuff. I will let you get back to the conspiracy now.
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“Ummm, maybe a group of women who like to laugh and do silly challenges.”
– It would probably shock you to find out that the analysis of what makes different groups of people laugh is a vibrant field of research. Of course, it is only open to people who don’t think that “just because” is a valid response to anything.
” I will let you get back to the conspiracy now.”
– You need to stop being rude to my readers now.
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I find heels uncomfortable at the very least. I wince in pain just looking at these pictures.
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I suppose if your feet were melded into those shoes, so that they provided a lot of side support, you could run in heels. I don’t wince in pain when I look at such pictures, because I’m very used to people torturing themselves. One of the worst tortures is to keep your arms above elbow level when you are doing boxing training for a long time. So pain is certainly no objection. But shouldn’t these women be made to carry bags of groceries or large hand bags full of change, so that they look more the part of the harried and hurrying shopper?
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Yes, I agree, they could at least make themselves useful in the process. 🙂
Jokes aside, the public image of a Russian -speaking woman bothers me hugely. I know for a fact that job applications with last names like mine end up in the trash most of the time. And this is the reason why. 😦
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Yeah, well, if it were possible to imagine, I’ve experienced more severe discrimination than you, at least I presume so. I’m the only identity that postmodernists, for instance, consider it justifiable to hate.
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“Yeah, well, if it were possible to imagine, I’ve experienced more severe discrimination than you”
– I’m sure you are right. Which is why I know you understand my feelings on the matter.
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Yeah I do. I also remember the day I suddenly woke up and realized that I had to push the rest of women forward, otherwise they would drag me back with them. That was way back when I suddenly understood that. People like us, we’re playing on the margins and there is a world of difference between being just behind the margin and just over the margin.
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//And this is the reason why.
To a large extent (>50%) I am sure that if the public image of a Russian -speaking woman is horrible, it means US citizens prefer it this way. In US many women would participate in such too. Most people aren’t citizens of the world, as you are, and have lots of prejudice, which only seeks any excuse to flourish and if you don’t give it one, it’ll make it up. Your logic partly reminds me of “if Jews were better, there would be no antisemitism” OR “because of women like her, people (read men) don’t see feminism seriously”.
As for throwing into garbage job applications with last names like yours, the same would sometimes happen in Israel. Not because of what “Russian women” do or don’t (nobody cares to know & Israel was built by Jews from Europe & many Russian speakers are teachers, doctors, etc.) , but because people prefer to employ similar to them people. See paragraph above.
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“To a large extent (>50%) I am sure that if the public image of a Russian -speaking woman is horrible, it means US citizens prefer it this way.”
– I think it’s horrible because our women are mostly horrible. This is one of those stereotypes that is justified. Russian-speaking immigrants in North America almost never integrate.
“ot because of what “Russian women” do or don’t (nobody cares to know & Israel was built by Jews from Europe & many Russian speakers are teachers, doctors, etc.) , but because people prefer to employ similar to them people. See paragraph above.”
– I would be wary of hiring a Russian-speaking person, too.
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because people prefer to employ similar to them people.
When hiring, it never occurs to me to ponder if they like soccer, or worship the same god, or speak the same language, or have the same color of eyes as I do.
It seems that such “preference for people like you” is just a veiled expression of racist left-overs from segregation.
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//It seems that such “preference for people like you” is just a veiled expression of racist left-overs from segregation.
In US when family name sounds Black? Most likely.
I was talking in general, not only about US, and, of course, by similar to them I meant nationality & culture (& sometimes religion), and not soccer. And I didn’t call this “good” or not discriminating. It is discriminating & in ideal world – wrong, but I described reality.
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Ouch.
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In response to Culture Club’s comment above; actually, you probably do, you just don’t realise you’re doing it. It’s the very subtlety that makes it difficult to combat. And by it, I mean all forms of prejudice.
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Well, this isn’t just a Russian thing, over the last few years I’ve seen the high-heel-runs advertised in several European cities. Usually as charity runs for breast cancer support though and not for fashion prizes. In this context they are also usually happening in October (breast cancer awareness month).
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This is the other thing I do not understand … charity runs and so on. Why do not people / the government just hand over the money? It is all so gimmicky.
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It was organized by a fashion magazine. Print media are dying out so they are trying to be inventive, I guess.
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What about men with Russian family names?
In Israel it wouldn’t depend on sex, as far as I know.
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That depends on their profession. Programmers, for example, are hugely valued. It’s helpful to have a Russian last name if one is in that field.
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It’s the fact that they’re running for a shopping certificate that is so sad about this and non fun. Heels, racing in heels, etc., in itself isn’t really the main issue.
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Mind you, if they live in Moscow and can participate in this kind of thing, their income is probably larger than mine. So this isn’t even about the money. . .
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I know, that’s what makes it even worse. They are well dressed, athletic, and prosperous looking, and doing this…
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It’s like there is a competition among women in our countries these days to prove that one is completely vapid, brainless, silly and helpless. It’s like living under the suspicion that one has a brain is intolerable.
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