I knew that notions of feminism were looked down upon and swept under the rug in Asian cultures. This makes me want to investigate the implications of “mail order brides” on society by using the feminist writers we have read so far. The article I have chosen to write about today shows the trends of mail-order brides rising as the economy drops. Though this article focuses on the commodification of marriage in Europe, this type of human trafficking is a global issue. Women’s rights activists that we have discussed in class – especially the second-wave feminists like Brownmiller and Friedan who discuss silent, dissatisfied women – encourages me to use the feminist lens to analyze and tease out the types of inequalities the existence of mail-order-brides brings about in society and how it reifies patriarchy in the world we see.
In this MSNBC article released just last month, we can see that the fight for women’s rights still has a long road ahead of it. Like what Susan Douglas comments extensively about in her book Enlightened Sexism, we like to think that the fight for women’s rights is finished. We can pat ourselves on the back and say we did it. Hooray, now what’s next? Just as Douglas prescribes, I think we need to toss this mindset out sight and out of mind because right underneath our noses are women being put on the market for a role that has been socially constructed to please men. In fact, this article shows that the trends for this occurrence are rising in conjunction with the economy dropping. Proponents of this business say argue that it is merely an “international matchmaking industry” that helps those who have lost their marriages as a result of the poor economy. According to proponents, it is also bringing money back into the economy. In fact, this booming business wheeled in $2 billion this past year. Furthermore, some men find dating too hard and that this business alleviates that “pain” or burden of traditional dating. Some supporters of this business say that dating is too expensive and opts for this international matchmaking service because “$2,000 to get a beautiful women – [is] a bargain!” There is no harm in this business because it’s just international marriage or a matchmaking service.
What I’m hearing from the supporters of this newly rising business is somewhat of a Hefner argument as well. Proponents argue that they’re liberating men from the troubles of finding love and liberating international women from a non-American lifestyle that is assumed to be of poor standard. Though the argument is framed this way, in the end, this is just a story we tell ourselves to mask the ugly truth. We employ euphemisms. We abuse the thesaurus to make things sound better when the content itself is the same. A “softer version of human trafficking” is still human trafficking no matter how many ways you can say it. Just as Heffner’s plan to sexually liberate women turned into a market that turned women into sex objects and symbols, this business objectifies women and turns them into a commodity. Even the language used perpetuates the idea that women are marketable “items” like the reference to women as a “bargain”, a “service” or the dispatch of “agencies contracted to recruit women.” The company Hand-in-Hand even “estimates the potential savings of a homemaking wife at $150 per week.”
What needs to be looked at here is how these businesses use the word marriage. Even though it is common to think that marriage is for the sake of love in the great 21st century, this rising businesses of “international matchmaking” is using the word in economic terms. These establishments are trying to sell the idea that love can be bought and that one can do without the hassle of actually getting to know someone and proceed with traditional dating. Susan Brownmiller from the second-wave of feminism already criticized marriage as an arrangement to reaffirm women’s submissive roles in society (Levy, 47). This is exactly what is happening today. Betty Friedan in the 50s had already called for an emphasis in creative work and breaking routines to end women’s dissatisfaction with life because the perception that women gained fulfillment through marriage is false. Yet, the men this article quotes and describes are only interested in “buying” these brides so that she can cook, clean, iron for low price of $2,000. The fact that these customers of businesses like Hand-in-Hand, mentioned in the article, expect their newly purchased brides to do these chores proves Douglas’ point: the fight for women’s rights are not over. These assumptions and expectations of the roles of wives stem from a patriarchic mindset that clearly has not been overwritten with something more liberating for women. Though there very well could be, we haven’t seen burgeoning industries of mail-order grooms and we can probably guess at why this is so.
These types of issues are important to acknowledge and follow because they challenge the widespread belief that feminism is a done deal. There is obviously still a belief that men and women are inherently different – the men are from Mars and women are from Venus argument that Douglas also elaborates on. The entrepreneur being quoted in the beginning of the article believes that it is the true nature of men to covet a beautiful, younger woman. By looking at these types of issues we can challenge these ideologies taken to be true. The regurgitation of such a claim is merely reproducing the same unequal society we’re trying to move away from. How then, can we say gender equality has already been met? Would it take a literal bride in a box like the one depicted above to set off alarms in everyone’s heads?
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