A Brief Guide to Mail Order Russian Bride Websites

A couple months ago I spent about a week obsessed with mail order bride web sites. Especially ones that were chock-full of Russian women. I'm not sure what it is about the Russians. I guess I romanticize these children of a fallen empire. Plus, they have variety. There are the pale waifish Russians that feel familiar from some Tolstoy novel or Checkov play, the asian-ish ones from the far eastern states and the healthy corn-fed types from the Ukraine (I guess not just Russia), which seem to come from the Eastern version of our Midwest. I guess I'm a sucker for 80's hair/makeup/fashion, too. They also have really great names.

Anyway, during the course of my brief obsession I saw the best and worst of the mail order bride sites. It's a peculiar genre. There are sites that are done in the US and ones that are actually done in Russia. Some sites have a few hundred women. Some have over 10,000, which I find amazing in and of itself. In the Yahoo category "Eastern European Women Looking For Western Men" there are 129 sites. Purchasing the address (and phone/e-mail when available) of a woman usually costs between $5 and $12. You cannot, unfortunately, just buy the women outright.

My intention isn't really to let you know how the whole transaction works. Apparently a lot of the time the women come over and spend lots of your money and then go back. Watch some television expose if you want that kind of info. My intention here is to give a brief guide to the sites themselves, which are their own strange world. It may not be your cup of tea, but, in my opinion, it's a fucking amazing phenomenon. What is more bizarre than looking at hundreds of sometimes pretty young foreign girls (or, for that matter, not-so-pretty middle aged women) with crazy names and boring interests written in broken english? Well, the fact that there's a "Buy Now!" button at the bottom of the page. My guide is here.

-Mark Yokoyama

 

n.b.: I'm not sure why this is true, but about 20% of the Russian women I've seen on these sites claim to be "economists." Maybe any sort of accounting translates to economist from Russian. Maybe there are millions of economists in Russia (God knows they need them). Maybe they think it will impress western men. If anyone knows the answer, please tell me!

 

Below I have some banners. If you go there and buy some women, I will make some money. I don't actually want you to go buy women, but I thought you might enjoy the banner ads. They should all go to the same place, so don't bother clicking them all, either.