Gender Roles in St. Petersburg or “Damn am I Glad I’m a Guy”

Not to come off as Xenophobic, but have you ever noticed that when you travel to other countries, the people are different from you? I know, it’s hard to believe. At least CIEE seems to think it’s hard to believe, as they spent roughly 2 hours (no hyperbole) explaining this fact to us. As if we were going to come to Russia so that we could feel right at home. But I digress. So far I’ve spent a fair amount of time discussing the city and culture as a whole, but I feel that I have failed to adequately impart unto you, gentle readers, a proper impression of the Russian people. And the easiest way to do this, I feel, is to take the middle-school-dance approach and draw a firm dividing line between the boys and the girls. This may sound both sexist and racist, but keep in mind that given the fact that the country has had multiple government upheavals in the last couple of centuries and has only recently (last couple of decades) adopted the notion of “having your own property and money”, feminism has not been terribly high on most people’s priority lists. This means that gender roles are much more firmly solidified than most western nations. So, without further ado, let’s get stereotyping!

Women: Russian women I feel can be divided into three types: Supermodels, Babushkas, and Clowns (people not quite old enough to be babushkas who still try to pull off the supermodel look with plastered on makeup). Fortunately for the male beholder, the first type is easily the most common. This is because fashion is huge here. I’m going to go out on a limb and say New York can’t even draw a bead on how big fashion is here. There is a mall near where I live where the first 3 floors are nothing but shoes. Literally. 3 floors, about 7-9 stores apiece. All of which contain nothing but shoes. And unfortunately for the women, they are pretty much all high-heels, not of any kind of friendly variety. I could slip a dime under most of them and it would cover maybe half the surface area. It’s kind of hilarious watching the girls from our group try to blend in (as if people don’t know we’re foreigners the second we even think about opening our mouths). I take a look at the oozing blisters and consistently refreshed scabs all over their feet and thank the good lord above for my Y chromosome. Unfortunately, this prevalence of impeccable fashion sense does make way for a problem we have right back home in America: Women that are too old/fat/ugly to wear the clothes that they are who desperately want to feel like part of the in-crowd (the aforementioned clowns, as that is what their makeup invariably ends up looking like). After a few decades, they turn into babushkas and take up their straw brooms and dustpans and start getting those cigarette butts off the street.

Men: Us dudes get a lot more freedom in the whole “looking like you give a crap” department. This is because there are actually more women in Petersburg than men, so consequently the men don’t have to try as hard. This is a privilege that is actually pretty heavily abused, as the prevalent hairstyle in young men is (and again, I promise I am not lying) the mullet. OK, so it’s not quite a full on white trash ape drape, but it’s definitely party in the back, business-casual in the front. I would say about 70% of the guys you see between the ages of 16 and 25 have this haircut. Apart from the hockey-hair, though guys dress basically like guys in America, except with nicer… wait for it… I bet you’ve already guessed… that’s right: shoes. But even that’s not quite as consistent as chicks in heels. In fact, I’ve found that if I’m not speaking, staring straight ahead, and looking moderately angry, it’s not uncommon that some people mistake me for a Russian. Then of course I open my mouth and it all goes to hell, but at least my method of trying to blend in doesn’t inadvertently lubricate my footwear with blood.