How We Are Corrupting the West 

To begin with, you will easily recognize your fellow countrywomen in any cosmopolitan crowd of tourists and locals. You ask why they stand out - is it the modest or poor clothing they wear? No, on the contrary, compared to Ukrainian women, foreign ladies, especially young ones, dress rather simply, I would say even ordinarily. During the day, you will hardly see a woman (except, of course, for our compatriots) on the street dressed up for a ball or a restaurant. There, you are also not likely to run into a young woman wearing a decollete all the way down to her waist, a mini-skirt, or something that simply exposes her abdomen. (Incidentally, I would like to note that I have no objection to any exotic outfits - they are merely a matter of personal style, which does not hurt anyone).

I was also surprised by women's swimwear on resort beaches - it is very traditional compared to those pathetic pieces of fabric (much smaller than fig leaves) that Ukrainian beach Venuses sport. If we add to all this the fact that in some countries it is simply unethical to wear leather and fur products (according to the Greens' slogan, "Only animals have the right to wear fur!"), we get a full picture of our "proletarian modesty." I will cite another observation, which is not at all new: some of those outfits that our young women so naively fall for are treated in the West as some sort of uniform indicating a representative of the oldest profession.

So what do western women wear? Nowadays, they have one general guiding principle: maximum comfort of an outfit and its appropriateness for the given setting. Most, regardless of age, prefer clothes that do not require special care, for example, ironing. I got the impression that women there do not view clothes as an integral part of their personalities. They are confident that a woman can be shapely, stately, and attractive irrespective of the clothes she wears. "These rags I am wearing are not really me," a student from Vienna once told me. For this reason, you will rarely see a woman or a girl fixing, tucking, or tightening something on herself in public. Instead, what is much more important is a smile, natural manners, and a light, relaxed walk. As far as footwear, the comfort criterion is even more enforced - everyone wants to feel both shod and barefoot at the same time. And if somewhere in the crowd at a train station or an airport you happen to see a luxuriously dressed lady limping on high heels and dragging along an enormous suitcase, you can be dead sure it is a Ukrainian woman.

I do not want the readers to get the impression that I am trying to idealize the West, which, just like we do, mixes both the modest and the shameless, high-style and cheapness. And not only in fashion. For example, along with pop music, there are a great number of opera houses and symphony orchestras that are totally inaccessible to us. Or, say, books. Never before had I seen such exquisite bookstores as in Germany, offering such an unlimited choice of books. They are not stores but rather large academic libraries, where you can sit in a comfortable armchair and read a non-purchased book all day long. We, however, sometimes notice and borrow other things, for which we later blame our western neighbors.