Category: Women (Page 20 of 21)

The Slate has an interesting article dedicated to answering the question: Where did all those gorgeous Russians come from (ala Maria Sharapova)?

Though this is a fairly frivolous question (OK, extremely frivolous), I am convinced it has an interesting answer. To put it bluntly, in the Soviet Union there was no market for female beauty. No fashion magazines featured beautiful women, since there weren’t any fashion magazines. No TV series depended upon beautiful women for high ratings, since there weren’t any ratings. There weren’t many men rich enough to seek out beautiful women and marry them, and foreign men couldn’t get the right sort of visa. There were a few film stars, of course, but some of the most famous—I’m thinking of Lyubov Orlova, alleged to be Stalin’s favorite actress—were wholesome and cheerful rather than sultry and stunning. Unusual beauty, like unusual genius, was considered highly suspicious in the Soviet Union and its satellite people’s republics.

After watching a couple rounds of Sharapova, Anna Kournikova or Olga Poutchkova, I think I can speak for everyone when I say – It doesn’t matter where they come from, just keep em’ coming.