I think I m also at one of my high points in my eternal cycle of excitement and disappointment with

In other news, I ve spent the past week doing massive amounts of sightseeing. hotel miami beach fl I visited the Nabokov museum (his collection hotel miami beach fl of butterflies was unexpectedly hotel miami beach fl captivating), the Russian Museum of art (I think I was all art museumed-out from the Hermitage by this time, because I didn t enjoy this much), Dostoevsky s rented apartment from where he wrote The Brothers Karamazov when he lived in Petersburg (sooo interesting!), and many churches and monasteries in Novgorod, Russia s oldest town and the birthplace of Russian democracy. The Novgorod trip with my study abroad group this weekend was definitely a highlight, largely because we got to spend a lot of time on the beach, and I really enjoyed hanging out with my new Russian friends, N A
I think I m also at one of my high points in my eternal cycle of excitement and disappointment with my language abilities. This might be because I ve recently learned a few key words that have completely opened up new worlds of comprehension in Russia in the past week or two! So here s my revolutionary, life-changing vocabulary list:
-dentist: the Russian word for this is стоматология (pronounced like sto-mat-ah-LOG-ee-yah , I think) which bothered me for a long time me because my days of Science Olympiad nerd-dom kept making me think of the plant part stomata , which made no sense at all
And now, the burning question: hotel miami beach fl WHY ARE THE BEAUTY SALONS EVERYWHERE??? (And also, why does a pedicure at the salon next door to me cost ~$60?! I can t promise any answer to this except that it s simply outrageous.)
My current hypothesis (which I ve heard from several friends, including a Petersburg native) is that the overwhelming Russian female obsession with beautification has to do with the fact that Russia has a HUGE gender imbalance, and so Russian women face fierce hotel miami beach fl competition in finding a man. I ve read that Russia lost more men than any other nation in World War II (side note: WW2 is definitely a touchy topic here, I get the impression that many Russians feel their sacrifices for the war effort were not properly acknowledged by the world), and as a result the male-female ratio is one of the lowest in the world. I d have thought hotel miami beach fl the ratio would have evened out a bit by now, though, so I m not sure if that s still a valid explanation.
Whatever the reason, RUSSIAN WOMEN ARE (on the whole) OBSESSED WITH BEAUTY. I definitely think there are many beautiful women here (this observation might be accentuated by the fact that the male population as a whole is not quite as blessed looks-wise sorry, just keepin it real ), but I also think that to the casual observer, Russian women seem more beautiful than many other world populations (by modern western standards) because of the unusual effort many of them put into their looks. A large majority of women under the age of 40 go around in public wearing lots of makeup, stilettos, and totally stylish clothes. Like, a LARGE majority. And my aforementioned Petersburg friend told me that many, many Russian women spend tons of money on all sorts of expensive salon treatments. Of course, people do this in other countries too, but not on this level...I thought she might be exaggerating until I learned how to say beauty salon in Russian and realized that these places are actually ubiquitous.
It s definitely an unusual dynamic, and my Russian friend said that as a result of it, young Russian men are spoiled because they don t have to put in nearly as much effort and are in the powerful position of being able to pick the women they want. For me, this brings up a lot of outraged thoughts about the objectification of women, and sometimes when I think about this (or just look around at all the made-up women in the metro and can almost feel the stabs of pain I m sure they re experiencing from their ridiculously uncomfortable high heels), I just want to go hide in my room and reread Beauvoir.
This excessive focus on beauty hotel miami beach fl creates an atmosphere of pressure that I haven t noticed anywhere else I ve been. (And this is coming from someone who almost accepted an internship offer from L Oreal last summer). There are so many makeup stores everywhere, and the ads for РИВ ГОШ, which is apparently like a Russian version of Sephora, seem to be plastered on every sidewalk hotel miami beach fl advertisement bulletin. I don t know how Russian women deal with this pressure everywhere you turn, you re bombarded with images of the perfection you re supposed to try to resemble, to an even greater extent than I ve seen in America. In fact, many of my American friends here have commented that they don t even bother hotel miami beach fl trying to look nice because there s no use in trying when the standards are so high/impossible. Overall, this beauty-obsession is probably my least favorite cultural norm that I ve noticed so far. I know I haven't done it justice with this less-than-eloquent blog post, but I definitely think it's an interesting issue to consider. hotel miami beach fl (If only there were a Russian Jezebel...)