NOVEMBER 15. I don’t know about my friend Lena, but we can’t handle competition with American women.
Today I watched two parts of an American soap opera on video. Are they trying to fool us naive Soviet women, or is it true? The women are perfectly dressed; they look good at every age; they suffer beautifully; their tears fall without messing up their mascara. All their emotions are on their face, and they don’t run around the room or break dishes. You think, What willpower. Her life is falling apart, but her hair is done, her makeup is in place, and she's wearing extravagant jewelry. American men are so lucky; even in suffering their women are lovely. No wonder that men still love their wives after they leave them. I know this is the movies (I tell myself slowly and dreamily), but I’m still envious.
I’m sure I wasn’t very attractive during arguments with my husband: eyes swollen with tears, a red nose, dripping mascara smears, and an angry or miserable face (depending on the topic). Our fights were not pretty. I have to practice for the future; I’ll have to go to the bathroom from time to time to powder my nose or put on lipstick. Maybe the arguments will be different, too?
And that marvelous immobility of the face—all the emo-
tions are in the eyes. Our women move all the parts of their face during a fight. It releases the tension better.
So, girls, watch American movies, and study, study, study. It’s hard, I know. After an argument their women sit on a pretty sofa in a marvelously appointed room and have a glass of wine (smoking is out of style), or they fly off to Paris to forget or go out to lunch with a girl friend. There are lots of variations. Our woman, licking tears from her lips, goes to the bathroom to finish the laundry or to the kitchen to make dinner or maybe to the store to stand in line for a while.
But who has it easier when it comes to getting over an argument? My unexpected conclusion is our woman. The other continues to suffer in her Mercedes, in her airplane, or at the lunch table. Ours forgets about it in a few minutes—because she has to continue her great struggle for survival. And if she manages to buy a deficit product or if she finds French cosmetics at the store, she is a victor.
As Gogol said, “Whom are you laughing at? You are laughing at yourselves.”
NOVEMBER 18. Which of my friends is the happiest ? Which can be envied with good jealousy? I think the lucky ones are those who live for today, go out, and have a good time. In order to do that, you have to be either very silly or very strong. Dasha is frivolous. She can cast away her worries, even though she gets depressed now and then. Another friend, Nina, is independent and self-confident. She always has a lot of money; she dresses well and rides around in her own car (that’s a luxury for a
woman in Moscow). She has a lot of men, but she knows that she can depend only on herself. She allows men to court her handsomely and expensively, but she keeps a distance: Men have to be kept in constant tension. However, that’s easy to do when you’re good-looking, and she is. She has big hazel eyes, a refined nose, beautiful, sensuous lips, light hair, and a terrific figure. All this is multiplied by inexhaustible energy, charm, and pure feminine self-confidence. We are walking down a hallway in a restaurant. She is tipsy and in a good mood. “Make way, I’m coming,” she tells the men standing in our way. Delighted smiles follow her.
But her female wisdom came the hard way. Her husband cheated on her; she had a nervous breakdown and a few years of loneliness. Now it’s all part of another life for her.
She is what is called a woman to the marrow of her bones. You can’t learn it; you have to be born with it. A woman like that can drive men crazy to the end of her days. Nina even manages the horrors of our life easily. She is living proof that a woman can survive with fewer losses than a man in our Soviet conditions.
NOVEMBER 20. So Lena left for New York today without calling. Fifteen years of friendship thrown away so lightly! Many years ago, when we were younger, an adult friend said, “Just watch, your great friendship will last only until one of you falls in love seriously.” She was right.
My practical friend Katya said, “You should have swallowed your pride and gone to Lena and asked her to send some
men from America. Ugly ones, they’re easier to catch.” Katya is younger than I am but has been married three times. After her last divorce she announced, “I’ve had it with Russian men; the next time I’m marrying a foreigner.” Katya is a pretty and seemingly gentle young woman with an iron grip. She doesn’t like to work, but she likes to dress well, wear expensive jewelry, go to expensive restaurants, and drink champagne. I suppose she really should find an American. People say American men don’t refuse their wives anything. The trick is to catch a rich one, and then you can do whatever you want with him. I don’t believe these stories too much. But Katya may actually succeed; she’s a determined woman. Her former husbands will remember her for life. She threw a plate of food at the first one, cut his brow, and he had to get stitches. She broke the second one’s tooth. I don’t know either man. Maybe they deserved it. I like Katya’s sincerity when she explains the tactics of dealing with men: “Y ou have to catch him on payday and take all his money.”
“What is he supposed to live on?” I ask naively.
“That’s his problem.”
Her aggressiveness is hidden by her helplessness. What man can refuse a weak woman?
It’s probably not nice writing this way about a friend, but she’s more an acquaintance than a real friend. Besides, she tries her tricks on us, too, not just men, and that’s not honest. If we’re united against men, we have to keep our ranks tight. However, there’s much that can be learned from Katya. But why is the result always so pitiful?
NOVEMBER 22. Today is the anniversary of John F. Kennedy’s death. I came home from school many years ago, and my mother told me that he had been killed. I remember that I stood in the hall by the map and wept. He was an idol for us, the embodiment of the beautiful American dream. We were interested in every detail of his life. We read his speeches; we knew some of his words by heart. We were thrilled by his behavior during the Cuban crisis, even though we were on the other side. And he was also simply an attractive man, and we were all a little bit in love with him. His life with Jacqueline seemed like a model for family life, and she was our ideal. We tried to get copies of America magazine and spent hours poring over pictures of them and discussing her clothes, her hair, her poses. My friends were as crazy about her as about a movie star.
After the President’s death many books were eventually published about him in the Soviet Union. I think we remembered and revered him more than people did in America.
A few years ago I got an American book about him and his wife. I couldn’t believe it. It seems he cheated on his wife, was a bad husband, and often behaved egoistically and cruelly. I really don’t want to believe that. It’s hard to give up your childhood idols.
NOVEMBER 24. I can see that Western women who defend their rights are not going to like this, but they probably don’t know the destructive power of those rights. Almost all my girl friends work. They have pretty good careers, but I don’t know one who complains about inequality. Our desperate plea is
“Take away half our rights and let us simply be women/’ Let’s look at the word “feminist.” Femina means “woman,” so the struggle is for the right to be a woman, not a man. Then who are the real feminists, they or we?
I think that many of my friends dream of finding a foreign husband so that they can escape to the world of “inequality.” We’re tired of being everything—wife, mother, housewife, financial support, boss, and subordinate. We want to be weak and helpless. We want to give ourselves up into slavery. But no one will take us. Our slaveholders are too weak.