Word on the street is that it’s easier for American men to get an Eastern European hottie than an American hottie.
I followed some links until I wound up at a site comparing “ratings” of women, and one of the posters said that eastern european attractive women don’t know how hot they are.
The site itself is a bit absurd and I believe it (hope it) is tongue in cheek.
So are our slavic sisters downgrading their own looks? Is every hottie patattie in slovakie think she isn’t that hot? Are they all so hot that they dont realize they are hot?
Another argument I’ve heard is that even American men who are considered somewhat sexist here are wildly feminist by the standards of some other countries.
I think how you look at this depends on your perspective. I’ve known a lot more Eastern European women who married and dated American men than vice versa (I didn’t know many foreigners in Eastern Europe who weren’t American, so it’s hard for me to refer to other nationalities). I don’t think it had much to do with physical appearance, but attitude. Eastern Europe is a pretty misogynist place, and I personally didn’t meet any guys in Bulgaria I’d be interested in dating because I wasn’t fond of their attitude on the occasions that one of them hit on me. It was very macho and…frankly, kind of juvenile and lame.
It’s not a 100% all across the board thing, but I can definitely see an Eastern European woman finding the more respectful treatment most American men show toward women to be appealing.
I just have to share that I have a secret crush on one of my fellow cow-orkers at my new job. She has a very obvious eastern European look, and I find her incredibly attractive. She’s also married, of course. I don’t know what her husband is like, so I can’t comment on her standards in men.
You have two points in your OP. One, that you have heard on the street that it’s easier for American guys to pick up Eastern European women. Yes and no. When I lived in Russia, I occasionally met some guys who were there for the mail order bride thing. While I am certainly not a prize catch, some of these clowns were absolutely lower on the food chain than I am. And they were finding some success because there is a segment of women who realize that Russian men have set the bar pretty low. After 10 years of marriage, Mrs Slug has gained a whole new appreciation for me after hearing the horror stories back home. Although, whether or not she realized that when we got married, I cannot say.
As to whether Eastern European women tend to think that women you might think are gorgeous are ordinary, I think there is a little of that. Eastern Europe is a pretty big place to generalize though. And since Hungarians aren’t Slavs, I’ll leave them out of the discussion, even though I find Hungarian women to be beautiful.
My wife does indeed tend to think that some really nice looking Russian women are nothing special. I think part of it is because there is a “Slavic face”. Hard to describe but there are just certain faces that are very Russian. At one of the malls here, there tend to be a lot of Russians. Every now and then, we try “Red-spotting” to try and pick the Russians out of the crowd. We’ve become quite adept at it. Russian saleswomen pick my wife out in the store and approach her on a regular enough basis that I can rule out pure chance.
So I said all that to say this. I think that there is a certain level of familiarity to seeing “that” face. And whether the woman is nice looking or not, it just comes across as being rather ordinary.
I once had a conversation with a Polish woman friend of mine… I told her that there were some Polish guys in our crowd that came across as pompous immature jerks. I asked her if it was just a misreading on my part of their tone of voice and body language… she said, no, Polish men are pompous immature jerks.
I’m white, and lightly-complected (I take after my mom, who’s of Irish descent). Most Bulgarians are a lot darker than I am, and the fairer ones tend to have that same, obviously Slavic look.
I look different enough from them that on a couple of occasions, I walked into stores and had people address me in English straight off. I suspect it would have happened more if more people spoke English. People just knew that I wasn’t Bulgarian.
Heard from several Eastern European women living in Spain (definitely not a bedrock of feminism): “the men here do not beat you up and they don’t expect you to open your legs within five minutes. Nobody here has felt me up or told me I have to lower my panties in a job interview. I can be out with my boyfriend and speak with another man and nobody yells at me or calls me a slut.” Apparently in some of those countries, there is no such thing as the virgin/whore problem, the girls are expected to be whore/whores and that’s it :mad:
(There are cases of domestic violence, with quite a few deaths every year, but nowadays it’s considered A Nasty Thing, unlike 30 years ago; for the last reported periods, the majority of cases have moved to involving at least one immigrant from places which are more backwards)
People here in the Czech Republic generally don’t like being called “Eastern European”, but they were until fairly recently part of what we in the UK called the Eastern bloc… so I will add my thoughts on them anyway.
I personally think that the women are more attractive here, but that’s probably due to the whole evolutionary “people from far away but basically not TOO different will make good genetic partners hubba hubba” thing. I also have a (possibly) corollary opinion that that czech blokes are NOT that attractive in the main.
That may also be because they seem to care even less about fashion and grooming than “western men”. They also, in my experience behave rather immaturely toward women and will flirt more aggressively with waitresses/barmaids etc than I would as an Englishman.
This entire post matches my observations in the Czech Republic. I’ve been there a bunch of times and me and my friends are always surprised by the many beautiful women that are dating very averige looking guys. It sort of seams that most (young) women are very atractive while most men are not - and seem to think things like deodorant are a luxury* - , so western guys that take care of themselves may look good just because of the comparison.
The whole misogynist thing seems plausible, but I have no way of noing this is actually true.
*I’m not saying no one uses deodorant, but I’ve often been confronted - in the metro or tram for instance - with guys that were hoverin in an aura of BO.
I don’t know… I’ve spent quite a lot of time in the UK, and visited France as well, and while there were some very attractive women, I wouldn’t say that the women were hotter on average than what I see here; if anything the average was a bit lower, with a larger standard deviation.
In Prague and Budapest, it was a different story- the girl at the chinese restaurant- hot! The girl at the concierge desk - hot! The waitress at the restaurants - hot!
I think the difference that I saw was that there’s no such thing as a MILF over there though; they were hot in their 20s and early 30s, but much older, and they probably went into a cocoon and came out wrinkled, ugly and belligerent. (like the women at the tram station, the museums, etc…)
I’ve spent a great deal of time in the UK- I lived there for nearly 15 years- and it is my considered opinion that women in the US are much, much hotter.
And if may be asked, why do they age badly? That is a horrifying scenario you have made. Perhaps it explains why their standards in men are so poor! Even the dungeons and dragons crowd of American men will look better than that.
Or are all the hotties smart enough to get married before they turn 35, so you don’t see them, they are in their mansions?
Having lived in Eastern Europe in the 90s, I would speculate that this is the core of it. A lot of women in Eastern Euope are poor. The hot ones hope to trade their looks to a man they wouldn’t have considered in their own country for Western citizenship. Occasionally, in the really, really agrarian areas, it’s because the hotties are considered undesireable in the local marriage market because they are seen (at least by their potential in-laws) as being high mainetance (it takes a lot of money to be hot in Eastern Europe) and not suitable for farm work and child-bearing.
Damn multi-quoting… I didn’t post that stuff that has my name on it in sassyfras’ last post…
Women with children are either at home (maternity benefits are MUCH longer lasting than in the UK/US) or tend to work in clerical/teaching/office jobs. In my particular building there are about 60 people working, and only 3 of us are men, so they’re concentrated a lot in places not so visible to tourists. But there are plenty of attractive women here, oh yes…
The older generations grew up and lived under socialism… it was a different time and though everyone had a job (whether they wanted one or not… that’s communism for you) and basic healthcare there wasn’t a lot of emphasis placed on cosmetic care etc. Newer generations seem to look after themselves a bit more, both men and women.
I will never forget my trip to visit Estonia and how absolutely amazing all the women looked. Even with cobblestone streets, all the women wore high heels, and their attention and flirtation with even ‘ugly’ American men was more than obvious. I agree with the starvation theory because Estonia was a cast off Soviet country without a lot going for it. If you’re American and you are in their country, you are ‘exotic’, ‘feminist’ (compared to their men), and are ‘wealthy’ as demonstrated by the fact you had the money to get to their country, have normal teeth, and dress nicely/use deodorant as others have already pointed out. Most of the native men treat women badly, have very blue collar jobs, and let themselves go physically at a young age.
I don’t know what her husband is like, so I can’t comment on her standards in men.