Custom Bride: Who and why buys wives abroad
TODAY'S RELATIONS HAVE BECOME EASIER. Hundreds of sites and applications have appeared - from Pure, with his acquaintances for a couple of hours, to Badoo, where you can immediately announce serious intentions. Again, geography has ceased to matter: you can get together with a person from any continent and decide together who will move to whom.
Against this background, an industry continues to exist that arranges marriages between men from countries with a high standard of living and women from poor regions of Asia, Latin America and the former USSR. Some men are willing to pay tens of thousands of dollars to write themselves barely familiar woman as a spouse, and some women continue to focus on the rapid emigration and relocation at any cost. We understand why the dream of a prince from abroad is often dangerous.
How to order a wife
At the beginning of the 19th century, American farmers and ranchers who lived in isolation placed advertisements looking for wives ready to move from more populated areas. A few decades ago, the first international dating agencies appeared. At first they existed offline: men chose brides in printed catalogs. Now the industry works primarily online and is somewhat like dating sites - the difference is that such services from the very beginning do not imply equality between women and men.
The names of popular dating sites speak for themselves: Latin-Wife.com is designed to find brides from Latin America, AnastasiaDate.com - to get acquainted with women from Eastern Europe, Cherry Blossom (translated as "Sakura") - for those who want to find a girl from Asian countries. Among the candidates there are women of different ages, and many of them are very young.
Agencies help to get documents for a visa and arrange trips for men on a “show of brides” to Eastern European countries - what is happening is reminiscent of either speed dating or the car market
The hosts are usually men from Western Europe, the United States, the countries of the Persian Gulf and relatively rich regions of Asia such as South Korea, Thailand and China. Interestingly, Thai and Chinese often take girls from Cambodia and Vietnam as brides - for the latter, this is considered luck. At the same time, Thai and Chinese women also often become wives exported - only for residents of the United States and Europe.
International dating agencies are quite popular. Thus, the audience of one of the largest services AnastasiaDate.com has reached 20 million active users. Most online dating services are paid. You can give money for the time spent with potential brides in the chat, or pay for membership on the site. The Guardian notes that interested men are willing to spend thousands of dollars on this.
The same agencies help to get documents for a visa and arrange for men to go to a "show of brides" in Eastern European countries - what is happening is reminiscent of either speed dating or the car market. As a rule, a restaurant or a banquet room is removed for a bride, where the suitors can communicate with hundreds of candidates at a time and choose the right one. Writing a bride is not a cheap pleasure. So, one of the Singapore agencies calls the amount of five thousand dollars and promises to accommodate a trip to Vietnam, the choice of the bride, the wedding and return home in one week. The arrival of his wife is scheduled a month after all the documents are ready.
What do women desire
The dream of a post-Soviet woman to go abroad, even if slightly faded from the 90s, has not disappeared anywhere. As a rule, the main motivation for women posting their profiles on such sites is to improve their standard of living. "The future husband did not seem particularly attractive to me. But I wanted my son to have a father, life in America, a higher education, so I seriously considered his candidacy. I was a single mother, worked in the mail and lived in a tiny apartment without hot water and heating, sometimes there was not even electricity, "the Ukrainian migrant Oksana Zakharova explained in an interview with Marie Claire. Another Ukrainian native Lera Loeb says that she decided to find a husband in the United States, after she went to study in New York for an exchange, was refused to extend her study visa, but still she dreamed of building a career in America.
But it's not just about the money. In addition to the desire for comfort, some are looking for men from Western Europe or the United States, because they consider them more faithful, less jealous, aggressive and prone to chauvinism. A study by Conx College shows that many women perceived marriage with a foreigner as a chance to escape from traditional society.
What do men want
This setup is very different from what their potential husbands expect from exported wives. "Russian women, unlike Westerners, see themselves as wives and mothers in the future," describe the advantages of Russian brides on the RoseBrides.com dating site. - Career will never replace marriage and children with them. Russian women like to chat, go shopping and do others typically female things. They are more patient than Western women, and may be tolerant of things that others will never tolerate. In addition, they may have low self-esteem. "
"Many American women are too interested in my financial capabilities. They call first, come to your home - women have not done that before. So, in my opinion, it’s better to meet with those who do not allow themselves such behavior," says 65 old man who was married to a "discharged wife". At one of the dating sites, it is explicitly stated that a woman should not be “spoiled by feminism”.
A poor country bride becomes an ideal option for a man who believes that a woman should not have ambitions, but she should be young and energetic, including to do all the housework
Grooms of this type value as a partner not only following traditional canons, but also young age. The difference of 30-40 years in such marriages is more likely the norm than the exception. Delaney Davis, 60, the owner of the FilipinaWife.com service, is himself married to a girl who is 42 years younger than him and thinks that looking for young wives in other countries is absolutely normal. Davis says that most of his clients are middle-aged, divorced and do not want to meet with the same age from their countries, because they "remind them of their former ones". Young compatriots in these men are not interested at all.
So a bride from a poor country becomes an ideal option for a man who believes that a woman should not have ambitions, but she should be young and energetic, including to do all the housework. Moreover, Davis is sure that in the case of age, the interests of the bride and groom often converge: "Many women in the Philippines and around the world are looking for men older than themselves, because their peers are compatriots cannot provide them."
Why is it dangerous
One way or another, “discharged wives” regularly fall into the criminal chronicles, becoming victims of violence. In South Korea, a 47-year-old man killed his 20-year-old wife from Vietnam a week after her move. A California resident who twice found wives through international dating agencies and purposefully met only migrants, systematically showed cruelty towards them and killed at least one of them. According to ABC News, in Australia, where the international dating industry is also common, Filipina girls aged 20 to 39 are six times more likely to be victims of abuse than local women (as a rule, their spouses or partners used violence).
Different countries are trying to regulate the global "market of brides". In the Philippines, back in the 90s, they passed a law prohibiting the advertising of international marriage agencies, after it became clear that many women, through their intermediation, faced cruel treatment, were forced to sex work and in fact fell into slavery. In 2008, in Cambodia, in principle, it was forbidden to bring together local girls with foreigners for several months (however, as a result, the agency only increased the "supply" of women from Vietnam).
In the USA, in 2005, a law was passed, according to which agencies are obliged to check the fiancé on criminal records and sexual offenses. But this does not always help. Oksana Zakharova told how her American husband controlled her every step, knowing that she was financially dependent on him and didn’t even speak English properly to ask for help. Zakharova’s story ended well: the police saw her husband abusing the child in public, after which he obediently signed the divorce documents.
What is more bad such marriages
Even if we are not talking about violence, "discharged wives" have many difficulties. Their only friend and interlocutor in the new country is the person with whom they, at best, have met several times. Many women do not know the language and for a long time can not get a job. In addition, their new life may be very different from the tale of gender equality: many of these suitors, on the contrary, expected to be submissive.
As a result, the relationship between the spouses are cold and detached. One of the users of Reddit in the thematic thread admits that his "discharged wife" speaks about sex and deals with it as if it were another of her household duties.
In the Philippines, back in the 90s, it became clear that many women, through the mediation of agencies, faced cruel treatment, forced sex work and in fact fell into slavery
Despite the fact that the practice of dating in the first place injures women, the problem has a downside. A journalist from The Guardian traveled to one of the Bride Reviews in Odessa and found that some brides are not going to marry the Europeans who came to them, but are trying to get as much money out of them as possible at first dates. In other words, the market works in both directions, transforming consumer relations for both men and women.
Sometimes such marriages, according to the spouses themselves, add up successfully, but this does not negate their questionable background. In 2009, American Glamor published the story of Lera Loeb, fashion bloggers and producers - she said that she came to America as a "customized bride." In appearance, Lera was lucky: her husband turned out to be a music producer from New York-based Soho. But why did he, a middle-aged man, need to look for a bride among young girls from developing countries - it remains a mystery.
Photo: Barbie, Maurizio Milanesio - stock.adobe.com, Nikola Spasenoski - stock.adobe.com
