Beautiful People, Beautiful Ideas

Dear Blog,

Most Russian men will tell you something on the order of "yes, that woman is beautiful, but Russian women are more beautiful." I usually take this as some sort of bias or bravado, but walking the streets here is life altering. It's not just the women, the people in general are simply beautiful. There is a joke in Seattle that "A Seattle 8 is an LA 4", which means that women in LA are much better looking and on a different scale. I think that it's even more true for men, because Seattle has a density of geeks that is unmatched in the universe, a climate that makes exposure to the sun impossible, and a social dress code one step above that of the medieval peasantry.

But both here in Moscow and in St Petersburg, the beauty of people (without plastic surgery no less) is awe inspiring. It's not that there is a beautiful person every now and then. It's that, despite the fact that the whole country dresses like it shops the discount racks at Target, at least a third of the population looks like they could model for Abercrombie and Fitch, and the rest would be stuck with the tragic social stigma of modelling for Gap or victoria's secret. I mean, at least three quarters of the college age people are runway material. I'm serious. We went to a club the other night and it was ludicrous. It's like they have an ugly people filter at the door or something. I kept wondering why they let me into the place. It was clearly out of my league. (Not that I'm making a statement about our wives here. Only myself.)

The men still seem to have that belief that manliness means you have to dress and act like a day laborer hanging plasterboard, complete with cigarettes rolled in your sleeve, and your shirt open to your navel. So you have to work a little harder to see their features. They also smoke too much, and many of them have the complexion and eyes of men who spend too much time with alcohol, but the number of tall, fit, handsome men here is intimidating for the short balding middle aged nerd that I am. One of the parts of urban culture I find appalling in the US is the worship of ignorance and the imitation of Ghetto behavior. It's become cool to be ignorant. Here, the guys just haven't had enough generations of wealth yet to change, but the women are bought into commercialism hook line and sinker. I mean, Target taste or not, no town in Europe or America has this many beautiful women walking the streets. It's like Disneyland for human aestheticists. A Greek sculptor would have a lot of models to choose from.

It would be easy for me to be crass, but that would diminish my message. But from what I have seen, Russian men are not biased or speaking with bravado about Russian women. Instead, they are speaking conservatively, and pragmatically, and honestly, just like they speak about everything else. Bravado is limited to masculine pursuits and drinking.

A few Russian women I"ve spoken to think that American men are better husbands, because of work and family values. I don't see that at all, but perhaps, with foolishness born of familiarity I am more aware of American sins than those of the country I am visiting. I think we all see grass being greener when we are at a loss in our places of birth. My experience with most eastern European men certainly would agree, but the families here appear happy and solid, and the men, at least from my vantage point, do not have that look of "I am supposed to be enjoying this but I would honestly really rather be doing anything other than this right now" that most American men seem to wear every day.

Clear skin, elongated features, flat stomachs, calm faces and demeanors, great posture, zillions of natural blondes, long bones, uniform features. They lack the smiles that are common in the west, because that would be a falsehood here. They do have a poster in the subway that says "a smile is a cheap way to look more beautiful", which is an adage I will keep with me into old age. I like it even better than the 90's quip: "Smile. It gives your face something nice to do." Smiling is for friends.

One of the things that makes them wonderful is how they actively listen. The average Russian will look you straight in the eye, and listen until you are done. They will quickly turn away if you are blathering, and blathering seems to be a very American trait here. It is considered disrespectful and stupid. The Yankee Peddler mentality that has spread across the country simply won't do, and that should present an interesting opportunity for advertising agencies here. Advertising is very visual and verbally limited, and when not, it is intelligent and succinct. These people do not worship ignorance. They have the closest thing to a Greek concept of excellence of any country I have been to. Humor seems to be based on nihilism or absurdity or disorder or foolishness.

Now it's true that city folk who walk a lot have an edge over those of us who drive every day. But the calm faces is something that's to be coveted. Once I have thought about this particular topic a bit more I'll write more, but the PACE of the culture is even better than that of Europeans. People are just not stressed, and they share the "we are all in this together" thing that Americans do not, and probably cannot. Socialism created a uniformity here and there has not been the time to create new classes that can war. The culture does not permit emotional displays as are common in the lower classes in the US. You are expected to be quiet, and considerate at all times, even more so than in Germany and Austria. Children do not run about undisciplined and loud, or touching things. Day-Care-guilty-Moms have not yet abdicated their social role of being the engines of discipline. Men do not sit on street corners leering or interrupting passers by, and a sidewalk hawker is not protected by 'freedom' to annoy you. You get the distinct impression that you would get beaten pretty easily for social infractions.

It is true that here, there are seemingly a lot of runway models attached to much older men, but there is no social stigma about it. I read an article by an economist recently that showed that statistically this is more common in the world than I had thought, and was much more common in history, and I can understand it both economically and socially, but it still seems kind of odd or pedaphillic to me. (For a guy who married a women seven years younger than him to say at least.)

So, while the architecture is fairly nice, having been frozen in the turn of the nineteenth century, or built in the megalithic soviet style, (or disgusting apartment warrens as built in that same style), and while the shops and coffee houses would absolutely shame any in America, and the land is quite beautiful outside the cities and very sparsely populated, it is the people who make this land beautiful, and while some of that beauty is physical, it is made more so by their demeanor and culture.

These are not quite the broken bent, and tired people that we saw from the post ww2 generation. They are still here among the very old who still live in subsidized housing. They exist in small numbers waiting at bus stops. But they are a disappearing minority in the land of the new capitalists and the burgeoning middle class, apparently confident of their future, and proud that they have done it all together. And while I will give them credit for their genes, which are probably some of the finest on this earth, I think their more impressive beauty, comes from having this feeling of determined content written on their faces.

Curt