A friend linked me to the poll featured in the online version of the Russian Cosmopolitan.
The question reads: “Who is a feminist?” Check out the only potential answers:
-A woman who doesn’t wear bras.
-A woman who has bad luck with men
-A lesbian
-Condoleezza Rice
That’s deep, isn’t it? If you weren’t upset enough, here is more:
— The other polls that website features appear to be more or less serious, so it was not a New Year-induced hangover joke.
— The magazine’s primary audience is women, so it was not a poll published by some chauvinist publication, which would have at least made more sense. It was apparently published under the “a poll for him” category, but I have strong feeling it was the women who voted, since they are the ones who visit the site.
NB: Please don’t think that Condoleezza Rice is listed there as a role model. Russian mass media enjoy mocking her personal life, so no, she is not perceived as a successful woman.
To get to see what the other readers thought, I had to vote. To have to pick one of these extremely intelligent option was embarrassing enough, but the results made me go look in the family tree for some proof I was not a Russian.
Guess what? Almost five thousand readers voted. And here is what they picked:
-A woman who doesn’t wear bras — 8.7%
-A woman who has bad luck with men — 58.49%
-A lesbian — 6.81%
-Condoleezza Rice — 26.01%.
So to be a feminist, you have to be single. Or wait, it must be the other way around. You get dumped, get bitter, and get a feminism handbook.
I guess readers of the Russian Cosmo would rather be married with one in four chances of being domestically abused by their husbands (Amnesty International figures from here) than be a secretary of state.
