It was a shared blog post that had a photo of a young woman in a bar, her face features indistinguishable. The woman, seemingly intoxicated, wore a short dress and no panties, and the caption stated that it was Zguladze. “These are the kinds of girls Kyiv likes now,” it read.
Of course, the woman wasn’t Zguladze.
The photo was intentionally picked to picture a similar-looking woman, slim and with Georgian features – and it might have fooled those who saw Zguladze once on TV. The post, originally published at the Russian-owned LiveJournal blogging platform, was quite popular.
This dirty trick that was obviously just another strike in the informational war on Kyiv’s government wouldn’t have grabbed my attention if I wasn’t, at the very same minute, fascinated with the real Zguladze speaking live on TV. I liked her smooth speech, her professionalism and even her appearance – effortlessly beautiful that it was. She was casual and classy, and apparently good in her job – her approach to reforming police gave hope for real improvement in the field.
And yet, there it was – a disgusting Facebook post that shared a photo of her panty-less double. A trick attempting to disgrace Zguladze and the government that hired her. But why in this way? Because they knew it would work.
I saw it thanks to one of my Facebook friends – one of those you don’t know personally, but whose friend request you approve because you see some mutual friends. I was curious to see the person who shared such a disgusting and obvious slander. He didn’t seem to be a Kremlin-paid online warrior. It was a hard-faced Ukrainian man named Mykhailo, seemingly in his late 50s. I wondered what this man’s reason was to share calumny about the young woman (twice!), who has recently accepted a job the essence of which was diving into the shit that Ukrainian police system is, and shape it into something civilized. I happily unfriended Mykhailo.
But I think I know a bit about his reasons.
He easily believed Zguladze could be the woman in the photo because the deputy minister is a beautiful young woman who happens to hold a top position. For Mykhailo, it didn’t make sense. There must have been a lie somewhere, a flaw, and when he was offered the flaw – ah, she’s a pantyless drinker! – he accepted it.
It’s hard to say where Ukraine’s intolerance for beautiful women with careers roots in. My theory is that beauty is seen as a tool to capture a wealthy man and avoid having a job. That wish probably is rooted in Ukraine’s Soviet Union background. Since their very early years, the Soviets encouraged women to work as hard as men, if not harder. Not having to work was an extreme privilege. There is a joke: “When American women finally conquered the right to work in mines, the Soviet women finally conquered the right not to do it.”
In the minds of those still considering an appealing appearance to be a chance to avoid work, beautiful career-making women are indeed nonsense. Or even worse – fakes. Trying to explain such women’s unlikely careers the public doesn’t lack offensive allegations. Sleeping one’s way up is a popular explanation.
Recently Jaanika Merilo, an Estonian of Ukrainian origin, and an executive director of a Kyiv-based investment company, experienced the Ukrainian beauty-shaming to the full extent.
The 35-year-old woman made the news when she was appointed an adviser for Ukraine’s economics and trade minister in early January. She is what you might call a classic beauty.
Hours after her appointment, Facebook got flooded with reposts of her photos, found on her and her husband’s Facebook. In the pictures, Merilo posed in a photo shoot that reproduced some of the Angelina Jolie’s most famous photos, in the Hollywood star’s typical style – sexy yet tasteful. The photos were immediately deemed “scandalous” and “provoking.”
The comments were merciless. The most humble ones argued that Merilo was “obviously stupid” and unsuitable for the job. Others mused about her evident debauchery and how she made her way into adviser’s chair through the beds of multiple patrons. Some bare legs and red lipstick were all it took to turn – in the eyes of public – a finance professional into a sluttish bimbo. That simple.
This disgusting trend isn’t limited to public people, it’s found everywhere.
A couple years ago my friend, a skillful investigative journalist and a very good-looking woman, ran a story about a local factory polluting the environment. In response to the publication, an anonymous blog on a popular website slammed the author, making especially mean notes about her “pretty face,” hinting that it was a marker of her futility, trying to discredit her work in that way.
If you think it is only low-educated online haters or vengeful industrialists who beauty-shame in Ukraine, you’re wrong. I can think of at least two recent cases when two young Ukrainian female journalists were not victims, but aggressors in this matter.
Each of them on separate occasions have put photos of young women on Facebook, who they met when reporting in the parliament, because the women wore amusingly short skirts or high heels. They mocked the women and presented them to an army of vulgar commentators. Those have reacted at once, hinting on the featured women’s poor intellects and rich sex life. Both photos, note it, were taken and published without permission.
This is a very sorrowful trend because of what it indicates – a vulgar, rudimentary society. Beauty is irrelevant to a woman’s career. Red lipstick can be worn by a top professional. Sometimes a short skirt is just a short skirt. There are no intellect markers in a person’s looks – they are in the person’s work. These are the lessons that many in Ukraine still have to learn.
We may own the latest iPhones, but when we beauty-shame women, we are cave people.
Kyiv Post lifestyle editor Olga Rudenko can be reached at rudenko@kyivpost.com.
