Anna’s Out of Town News

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.