Is Femininity a Feminist’s Enemy?: Feminist Performativity between Berlin and Mongolia

First of all, I haven’t updated in a while, because I am no longer in Mongolia. Considering that this is a blog about gender in Mongolia, it is difficult to write about it when you are not there and immersed in it!  And although I miss it massively, I have to spend the next year in the West writing more concentrated and academically about my experiences (something I will post here when I am done!). That said, I am planning to be back in Mongolia next summer and will see where life takes me from there, but until then… I have to unfortunately stop writing in this blog. I am very sad about this considering that it has thousands of hits from people all over the world (who are you people?!??!) who are apparently interested in gender, feminist anthropology and Mongolia and that is incredible! So, I hope you read again when I revisit this blog in a year or so (which I will do – I promise… my time with gender in Mongolia is not over). Thanks for reading! <3 <3 <3

ok, last post.

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I am back in Berlin and I got called a “Püppchen” today.

Püppchen??!!!

While riding around Berlin on my black men’s racing bike and grunting at people to get out of the bike lane, I got called a diminutive form of the word ‘doll’ and an image of myself listlessly propped against a wall, legs splayed, devoid of a voice, empty smile sewn into my frozen face flashed before my eyes. I knew I shouldn’t have put that eye makeup on today…

Seeking my refuge in the coffee shop that was my destination, I arrived and jumped off my bike to the immediate attention of a few well-dressed men.  The male gaze that confronted me hit me like a wave of ice water.  I realized something that I had largely taken for granted in Mongolia: As a white woman, I had been (relatively) free of the constraints of a male sexualized gaze.  My white skin shone like a beacon and blinded any other considerations of my appearance; I could largely do, say or wear anything and I was still a foreigner.  Most Mongolian men did not look at me as a possible partner, because my ‘otherness’ made me fall out of the scope of potentiality.  And thus, I felt relatively free in my body and appearance.

I miss how liberating that was… despite how twisted.

As I approached that coffee shop, I realized my year of non-sexualized corporal freedom was over.  My white skin does not (fully) protect me now; suddenly the small things on my body – my gait, my choice of makeup, my short skirt or my knee-length skirt, a black shirt or a tank top – lend credence to ‘view’ me, appropriate my body, categorize me… I feel like a walking billboard.

Being A Feminine Feminist

I am no raggedy ann!!!

Being called a doll evokes images of perfectly prepared, exaggerated femininity: clichés of airheads afraid to break manicured nails and giggling way too long at jokes that aren’t funny. These clichés fly in the face of everything about me that I think is feminist, but I refuse to let the sexualized gaze and femininity clichés I now encounter drive me to trade in my nail polish for a mohawk (although I could do both!).  Encountering so many awesomely strong, independent, intelligent – and very feminine – feminists in Mongolia has made me have a lot of critical reflections of what it means to be a feminist woman and how culturally shaped even this –ism can be.

Before going to Mongolia, I went through a phase where I decided I needed to trade in my various hair colors, prominent piercings and ripped clothing – completely acceptable in the Berliner context – for something less ‘shocking’ since I didn’t know what type of people I would be encountering. Walking into my first meeting of self-proclaimed, Mongolian feminists, I guess I was expecting to encounter a group that somewhat represented what I had left back home.  Walking into this group of highly stylish, fashion-forward, high-heel touting, cosmopolitan reading, brand name bag wearing, (occasionally) surgically operated women was not what I expected.

“Am I in the right place?” I asked myself.

Feminists can be dogmatic, too.

A few years ago after moving into my first leftist Berliner collective, I invited a friend of mine – who had been a former model – to my house to work on homework.  She was superficially involved in very different things then I was, but we got along very well and she was interested in the concept of my new residence.  We planned to work and then jointly eat with the rest of the collective, but those plans took a sour note when she entered wearing high-heels.  I tried to warn her (“…wear black and not too much make-up…”), but even I was shocked by the reaction she received.  The entire time and throughout dinner, nobody spoke a word to her.

Being myself completely aware – as a researcher of body ideals – what high-heels symbolically represent it is still completely unfair and generalized to conflate a woman’s personal choice to wear high-heels with complacency in oppression.

Coming from this background, I admittedly had to squelch my first impulse that this sexualized, femme fatale, “Sex and the City”-esque form of feminism I encountered in Mongolia was ‘wrong.’ How could embracing consumption and hyper-femininity be liberating?

Different means to reach a globalized end.

Feminism, like any other belief system, is historically and culturally specific.  In other posts I wrote about how Mongolia was the second Soviet country in the world, about the antipathy in Mongolia towards China, and also about the rigid gender divide in the Mongolian countryside, which all contribute to gender relations and feminism in Mongolia.

The ‘New’ Woman

This quote from an Inner Mongolian Cambridge anthropologist describes well two streams of political thought that exist in contemporary Mongolian society but developed during the socialist era: a tension between looking to the ‘ancient Mongolian’ past (Genghis Khan, pastoral, traditional culture, etc.) or to the ‘modern European’ future for inspiration.

“Mongolian nationalism during the socialist period was characterized by a tension between a desire for development towards a Soviet-oriented civilization and the wish to develop a national culture. The traditional identity was being transformed into the concept of a socialist ‘new Mongol’…This change of identity which had its background in the difficult relations with the Chinese, lent the Mongols the political and nationalist enthusiasm to deny themselves their oriental identity, and instead strive to be a ‘Western’ nation…(Sanders 1987:4-5)” (16).

As a result of the Soviet pressure to ‘modernize,’ a new stream of thought developed that pit itself against the old, ancient and Asian (also due to antipathy towards China): a ‘new Mongol’ who was Europeanized, modern, middle-class, educated, and progressive.  This philosophical stream still exists; only the criteria of modernity have changed to reflect free-market democracy.

This concept of the ‘new Mongol,’ and by extension a ‘new Mongolian Woman,’ was mirrored in my research regarding beauty ideals.  I saw different streams of beauty concepts that mirrored this philosophical divide; women alternatively look to ‘classic Mongolian’ and/or to ‘modern European’ concepts of beauty and try to balance the two.  And in the realm of plastic surgery, caucasianized beauty standards, and individualism through consumption, embracing these traits is a way of externally reflecting the ‘new Mongolian woman;’ the progressive, career-oriented, independent, educated, Europeanized, modern Mongolian woman.

In the context of traditional, rigid gender divides and the soviet mandate to curtail personal choice for the collective, to be an individual, making personal choices to buy products for yourself, to be able to earn your own money, and to express your femininity and sexuality (through reading Cosmopolitan magazine or in your appearance) is new and reactionary to the socialist era.  To express femininity is to be proud of your uniqueness.  To be an individual is revolutionary.

Feminism is culturally relative

Each form of feminism is a reaction to the specific cultural and historically circumstances and can take on many guises.  Although I think the hyper-sexualized appearance of urban Mongolian women can also be a limitation, I myself learned that I had to think twice as a white, Western feminist to understand that feminism can have multiple contexts, forms and shapes.  My form of feminism is not necessarily yours.  My history is not your history.

Thus, being back in the Berliner context, I notice keenly how one item – say nail polish – is culturally encoded and received completely differently based on where I am. The same nail polish that might be a representation of my individuality or agency in one context, gets me called a doll – a disenfranchised, objectified mute – in another.  A skirt in one context might be an expression of pro-sexuality liberation or a representation of commodified objectification.  It might help me relate to and understand women in one country, but bar me from entering feminist circles in another.

Somewhere between butch and ‘beautiful’

One of my research informants – a female Mongolian writer – told me about her own personal transformation from butch to stereotypical beautiful (again: culturally specific) a few years ago as a representation of her shift in her feminist approach.  She wrote about women and as such realized that by being feminine externally (and not necessarily internally) she had much more access to the women around her and to the female world in society.  She was proud to be a woman, and thus did not want to negate her femininity to emulate masculinity.  I myself noticed in my research that being more feminine in appearance opened up avenues to more anthropological informants, made them relax more, and allowed me to engage women on more levels.

Really there is no right way.  I was critical of hyper-femininity in Mongolia, but being back in Berlin makes me feel like the pendulum swung to the opposite pole, which isn’t much better and is just as limiting to other types of women.  And the onslaught of stereotypes, objectifying gazes, and belittling phrases towards feminized women in Berlin and Mongolia offer just as many surfaces to challenge gender norms in both mainstream and leftist culture as gender-bending does.  Besides… it confuses all those pundits who want to stamp feminists as ugly, baby-killing witches (as the Pat Robertson quote goes).

So, I’m gonna continue wearing my nail-polish, thank you! And still grunt at you to get out of my freaking bike lane.

No More than a Womb: A Woman’s Role Amongst Mongolian Nazis, Nationalism and Sinophobia

I suppose this is an entry that is long overdo. Despite the fact that I am now on the beach in Vietnam, have traversed several countries by train in the last few weeks, and am geographically veryveryvery far away from the windswept, bone-chilling sandstorms of the Mongolian spring, I am still writing about this country.

Before I get started, I wanted to explicitely state my intentions in writing this article: to point to the dangers, from a feminist woman’s perspective, of feeding the fires of extreme nationalism and/or ethnic blood superiority rhetoric. I by no means want to say that all Mongolians think this way; I am simply saying that these tendencies exist in contemporary Mongolian culture and why I perceive them to be limiting and dangerous. There are all types of people in Mongolia, just like everywhere else!

The reason I have been brooding over this particular issue recently – the issue of racism towards the Chinese, Mongolian nationalism and patriarchy- is an incident I experienced recently while in Beijing:

A few days after leaving Mongolia by train (and internally coping with the feeling of loss that came with it), I was trying to get back to my hostel after going to a bar late at night on the other end of town (and Beijing is a big town!). Unbeknownst to me, the trains stop around 11, so I ended up with a friend on the side of a freeway trying to flag down a cab. We weren’t alone; several others had also been ousted by the train schedule and were trying to get home.

I guess living in Asia has made me pretty good at recognizing face structures, cause I can now pretty much pick a Mongolian out of a crowd. And down the line a few meters from me was a man speaking English and not Chinese like the rest. I knew immediately that he was Mongolian and walked up to him to ask where he was going and if he wanted to share a cab.

“Ta Mongol hun uu?” I asked and the look on his face was priceless. Guess it wasn’t everyday that a white woman walked up to him and spoke Mongolian. We exchanged basic pleasantries and introductions, but that was all ruined by the following:

While my Mongolian counterpart hadn’t been looking, a cab had pulled up next to us. But, instead of waiting, a Chinese man who had been standing nearby got in the cab. In my mind, there is nothing wrong with this, since we had been talking and distracted. But once the Mongolian man noticed, he lost it:

“Get out you stupid fag***!” he yelled in English. “You stupid Chinese f***,” I am the blood of Genghis Khan, not like you you stupid, weak Chinese!”

He was flipping out. The Chinese dude in the car and the man standing next to me were screaming at each other. The Mongolian man kept yelling about him having the blood of the great, strong Genghis Khan, in contrast to his weak, ‘infertile’ Chinese counterpart. The man in the cab flicked the Mongolian off and sped away.

During this exchange a different cab pulled up. My friend and I quickly jumped in and left the racist Mongolian man behind still no better off than he had been 10 minutes beforehand…

But the entire thing left a very sour taste in my mouth. What a statement this Mongolian man is making about Mongolian culture while being in a foreign country! What an exchange laced with blood-based, fertility-laden allegories of national superiority.. yuck! If you hate China so much, why are you even IN China?

I had to write about it.

***

Sinophobia, or racism and/or hatred of Chinese culture and ethnicity, resonates very strongly with many Mongolians.  While traveling through the countryside during research (initially) on nutrition, herders would repeatedly tell me that they don’t trust fruit, because all fruit is from China and thus poisoned.  When I first came to Mongolia six years ago, gangs of orphans used to roam the streets of UB and accost travelers for money.  These gangs are conspicuously absent now with many people claiming that these kids have been taken by the Chinese and shipped off into the Chinese organ trade.  And, obviously due to the Chinese government’s usurpation tendencies, Mongolians fear that the Chinese propaganda machine will eventually turn its gaze to the wide and (mostly empty) Mongolian steppe.

This deep-seated dislike towards the Chinese did not solely arise on its own.  Rhetoric propagated by the Soviet Union in attempts to keep the Mongol nation from getting stronger played a large role in defining what contemporary Mongolians conceive as as “Mongolian.”  As I read in this article recently:

“In the first years of the existence of the [Mongolian] nation (note: which was founded in 1921), Mongols expressed a strong desire to create a Greater Mongolia that would include ethnically Mongolian regions of both China and Russia (Inner Mongolia and Buryatia respectively). The Russians were wary of the emergence of such a large political entity and they appealed to various tactics to create distance between the Mongols of the Republic of Mongolia and other Mongolian groups. As a result of these policies Mongolianness has come to take on a very narrow interpretation… Throughout the Socialist period, the notion of Chinese threat was routinely mobilised by the Russians for political reasons.”

So, although fears of economic dependence on China maybe legitimate and have a historical basis (I mean what country is NOT dependent on China?), many of these rumors are dramatized to serve a different purpose.  I asked the Mongolian National Nutrition Center about the fruit fears, which did chemical tests on Mongolian fruit and found out that the rumor regarding the poor quality of Chinese fruit entering Mongolia is simply not true.  It’s just an excuse to not eat fruit, but it proves a valuable point behind a lot of the stories and rumors circulating about the Chinese in Mongolian popular culture.  Hatred of the Chinese has proven to be a very good rallying cry to unite Mongolians in this unstable, increasingly globalizing world. Furthermore, it upholds ‘traditional’ patriarchal Mongolian culture at a time when women are questioning the traditional gender divide, and has led to the growing sympathy behind and rise of Mongolian ultra-nationalist groups like Dayar Mongol (whose flag prominently features a giant swastika), Blue Mongol and White Swastika.

Thus, it was super interesting to get into multiple conversations with the Chinese I encountered on my travels regarding Mongolia.  The Chinese citizens I talked to knew virtually nothing about their northern neighbor, except for one line in the official history book that stated that Mongolia used to be part of China. Considering how much time Mongolians spend talking about China it is odd to hear how little the Chinese think about them.

Woman = Womb, Man = Mongolianness

Mongolian nationalism plays upon already hyper-masculine Mongolian cultural tendencies and is especially appealing to young Mongolian men.

Setting politics aside for anthropology, if you look at any patrilineal society – a society in which a woman joins the man’s household upon marriage and inheritance is conveyed through the male’s family – a woman’s prime function becomes the continuation of the male bloodline.  Reproduction of male heirs is elevated and becomes a woman’s raison d’être in order to continue the male lineage. Thus, the preference in many societies for male children.

A Western vestigial of this patrilineal inheritance is the acquisition of the husband’s name upon marriage (which obviously still exists). In Mongolia, children get their father’s first name, which is then put before their own name… but the meaning is the same. According to ultra-nationalist rhetoric, you are your father’s child. You are of his blood. Your mother was just the carrier.

I also carried the weight of this distinction when I tried to define myself as half-American, half-German to Mongolians using the Mongolian word эрлийз (“erliiz”).  ’Erliiz’ refers to mixed-heritage children and could be translated as half-blood, which doesn’t sound so nice in whatever language you translate it into (i.e. Mongolian women calling me ‘Mischling’ while speaking to me in German).  The question that initially shocked me and subsequently irritated me was when I would be asked, after proclaiming my ‘erliiz’-ness, where my father came from.  I came to realize that my mother’s lineage was of secondary importance, and that my heritage was mostly defined through my father, something that irritated me and made me feel like my right to define my own identity (and those of any hypothetical children of mine) was being removed.

But this makes sense from a patrilineal and patriarchal societal standpoint.  Because lineage is passed down through the father’s line and children belong to that line the really only important ethnic marker of a child’s heritage is the father’s sperm.  And women become empty wombs without ethnic/national/identity markers.

A personal anecdote from my own life: The woman = womb, man = ethnicity standpoint is not new.  The reason my siblings, who are 20 years older than I am, do not have German citizenship is because of an antiquated German citizenship law that only allowed German heritage to be passed down through the father’s line.  Because my siblings only had a German mother – a non-ethnic ‘womb’ – they weren’t granted citizenship.  Just an example from Western culture of the same tendency, which points to being rooting in patrilineal/patriarchal nationalist societies that turn women into male heir, bloodline reproducers and remove their rights to their children (*cough*Nazis*cough*).  This law was revised in 1974.

The Extinction Myth

Mongolian Neo-Nazi Scenesters doing the Hitler Salute at a Metal Concert: One friend of mine who used to be in the scene told me that they just think it looks cool... at least that's why he used to do the Hitler greeting at concerts.

Nothing seems to unite contesting groups more than the idea of a joint enemy.  And China looms in the Mongolian cultural consciousness like a feral specter in the distance ready to pounce at the next available opportunity.  And this fear that China (and other foreigners) will one day take over and wipe the map clean of Mongolia has created a nationalist backlash.

I, myself, ended up at some pretty dodgy nationalist concerts while in Mongolia and I often felt unsafe.  However, my status as a white woman seemed to be less of a threat (although not completely safe, I am not an ethnic (sperm) driven threat to nationalist groups).  Thus, when the Mongolian man in Beijing was screaming at the taxi-caper culprit, he kept alluding to the superiority of his sperm, bloodline and thus strength, in comparison to the supposed weakness and infertility of the Chinese man.

I had the opportunity to see quite a few Dayar Mongol protests on Sukhbaatar Square at the end of last year.  The following statement from the organizations head, D. Gansuren, illustrates the extinction myth that feeds nationalist groups; the fear of loosing the bloodline and the need to defend the motherland against the evil invading foreigners:

“We should never forget that Mongolia was a powerful and great world empire. However, high ranking officials are corrupted and giving the land to the foreigners now. It should be mentioned that Mongolians are being beaten and yielded by foreigners who hire the Mongolians at lower wages. Let them do slave work in their own country. The ancestors of Mongolia did not sacrifice their lives to their enemy in order give the land to foreigners. That’s why I wish Mongolians would learn and have good examples from genius kings (referring to the Mongolian khans).  Also they should follow the slogans of the kings, regarded as superior for the Mongolian heritage. We wanted to reawaken nationalistic views to the public through protest. The swastika symbolizes peace, firm, forever and long life.” (an entry regarding the Mongolian meaning of the swastika is another post…)

My Body Belongs to… Genghis Khan?

A gender juxtaposition thus results from the sentiments of blood, ethnic and sperm-based superiority: If you are a in-group woman dating a foreign man, you are creating foreign children and thus a traitor. But an in-group man can date a foreign woman and have children without any repercussions.  The children that result from such a union have the sperm of the father and are thus of the in-group.

A French woman having her head shaved after sleeping with a German.

A Mongolian woman gets her head shaved by Dayar Mongol after sleeping with a Chinese man.

Resultingly, Dayar Mongol publically announced that any woman found sleeping with a Chinese man would have her head shaved (mimicking what the French did to young women who had slept with German soldiers during WWII and what Germans did with young women who had slept with non-Aryans).  Many of my foreign friends had to be super vigilant while walking around with a Mongolian-looking woman (didn’t matter if she was actually Mongolian), and most Caucasian men dating Mongolian women can’t go out in UB with their significant other for fears of getting beaten up.  However, I had no problem dating Mongolian men; in fact, it was widely encouraged by everyone I met and I was even asked if I wanted to have ‘Mongol babies’ (I do not.).

A great quote by Undarya Tumursukh encapsulates the dangers of extreme nationalism regarding a woman’s agency:

“Nationalisms turn the control of women, their bodies, and their sexuality into a matter of national importance by defining patriarchy as the core of national identity” (you can find her article here).

Mongolian Sinophobia uses reactionist fear to uphold a patriarchal tradition that limits a woman’s role to a reproductive function, and, due to the need for ethnic preservation, regulates who she can sleep with and defines whose children she bares.  No wonder all the pictures of Dayar Mongol are solely of young men!

I remember the first time while living with a nomadic herder family in Bayankhongor that the father of the family came up to his kids and grabbed his 2-year old son’s penis in a loving way.  He shook it, laughed and looked at me and went “mongol.. MONGOL!” as if to tell me that this boy’s member was the key to the continuation of the Mongolian nation.   I have seen this repeated in different families several times since.   This scene has taken on a completely new meaning for me.

Sex sells…votes?

Just a short post while I contemplate a longer one: The Mongolian presidential and parliamentary elections are coming up in May and June, which has thrown Mongolian political participation into the limelight. It will be super interesting to see how women’s political participation becomes a hot topic in the following months considering how parliament recently reinstated a woman’s quota in parliament; the original 30 percent quota was revoked in 2007, which has now been reinstated at 20 percent after the number of women in parliament dropped to 3…

But anyway, I just came across this Mongolian news article, which discusses a recent municipal election and the previous low rates of political participation amongst Mongolian youth. The most interesting aspect to me, however, was the attached picture of a poster commissioned by the General Election Committee aimed at revving up youth political participation, which happened to prominently feature the American porn star (who, it is noted in the article, is ‘touching herself’), Tera Patrick, and the statement: “Youth, I’m waiting for you in the polling station…don’t forget your polling and ID card…”

Tera Patrick as the face of Mongolian political participation? yuck.

The article also mentions that the committee did not have to work very hard to get this poster spread quickly, which subsequently became the face of the election and elicited many comments from passing boys about the size of that woman’s breasts.

Besides not being a very politically oriented statement, the poster both utilizes a hyper sexualized female body to detract from the seriousness of political participation, and reinforces the stereotype of a dumb, helpless woman (‘I went to the polling station, but forgot my card, silly me, can you get it? I’ll just stand here and touch myself until you arrive’). Maybe the Mongolian election committee took a few notes from the following United Russia advertisement that also utilizes sex to shock people and gain votes (as if I didn’t need another reason to dislike Putin).

 

I suppose this shouldn’t really shock me, but a poster like this would have never have worked 15 years ago in Mongolia. Is it a sign of our (globalizing) times that a picture of an American porn star is being used to garner votes in a municipal election in Mongolia?  Uuuugggggggh.

Where Are All The Women?: Gender Politics at the Grand Khural Fire Adoration Ceremony

This past week I have been itching to write about a ritualistic fire-lighting event that happened recently in the Grand Khural (meeting) hall of the Mongolian parliament building; an event being treated lightly by many women closest to it, nevertheless incredibly symbolically detrimental to women’s progression in Mongolia.

The Symbolism of Fire

If you’ve ever really thought about it, you’d be astounded by how many traditional cultures, only remotely connected to each other, are jointly obsessed with the element of fire.  Mongolia is no exception: in traditional Mongolian culture, fire represented the soul of the family, which is not surprising since the hearth is the center point of any yurt/ger.  Not to mention, life on the steppe would be quite destitute without its warming properties.

The result is numerous customs regarding stove etiquette that continue to be quite prevalent in Mongolian yurts, especially in the countryside (and have gotten me in trouble a few times!). Just as an example, your feet and shoes as the lowest and dirtiest part of the body are never allowed to touch the stove.  Never put any trash or an object considered filthy into the fire, which symbolically ‘dirties’ the soul of the family.  Don’t lean on, nor walk through the poles surrounding the fire, as it is a sacred area… etc.

The wife is the steward of the family’s fire and hearth and is accordingly the first to wake up every morning; the morning fire lighting is still frequently accompanied by an offering or ritual in either the form of grease, meat, tea or juniper burning. One traditional marriage custom is the symbolic lighting of the family’s first ‘hearth’ by the wife.  Furthermore, the ‘fire-prayer,’ or sacrificial offering, was historically a female-exclusive northern Mongolian Shaman ritual (enacted on the 29^th of the last month of the year – a SUPER interesting fact in the following story).  The point is that women have historically not been strangers to the element of fire, and in fact have been traditionally a keeper of this element that was symbolically and practically tied to their everyday experience as women.

The Parliament Fire-Lighting Ceremony

It is now 2012 (whowuddathought), which marks the 100-year anniversary of when Mongolia liberated itself from the Qing dynasty and thus became a (semi) independent state.  In accordance with this momentous happening, several parliament members, led by N. Batbayar, owner of the company “Fortuna,” organized a symbolic fire-burning ceremony inside the central meeting chamber in Mongolia’s parliament building.

This ceremony – which took place on the 29^th of the last month of the year like the aforementioned female-only fire-burning ritual – had apparently been ordained by a Shaman parliament member, who claimed it decreed to him by heaven.  The parliament members utilized taxpayer money to establish a ger (yurt) inside the parliament chamber and prepare a fire pit inside.  This fire was then symbolically lit in line with tradition, and the ceremony was attended by prominent parliament members and politicians (including the president and prime minister).  The lightening of the fire in the central parliament building was to be an act that symbolically represented the ‘soul’ of the government and its people, not unlike in a nomadic family or at a wedding ceremony.

‘Fortuna’ Batbayar opened the ceremony with the following statement:

“The state starts from the multitude. If the multitude has a fire, then the state, in turn, will eternally thrive.”

Symbolism abounds.  Just one problem.  Where were all the women?  Are Mongolian women not part of the multitude?

Considering what I wrote at the beginning, lighting the fire in the hearth is an action traditionally associated with women’s duties.  Yet according to ‘Fortuna’ Batbayar’s request: “Битгий галд ойрт. Гэрт орж болохгүй. Эмэгтэйчүүд хэрэггүй.” (“Don’t get close to the fire. Don’t enter the yurt. Women are not needed”).  The entire ceremony in the heart of Mongolia’s government apparatus enacted as a representation of the ‘soul’ of the people took place without either a single female parliament member or female journalist.

Justification?

According to his (Batbayar’s) statement, they used dirt that had been gathered from the Burhan (‘God’) sacred mountain – a mountain for the worship of the flags of Genghis Khan’s angry soldiers – and thus he made the decision [for women] to not participate.

Two of the main participants: "Fortuna" Batbayar on the left and the singer Jawhlan on the right.

Yes, that’s right.  Each mountain in Mongolian traditional culture has a different spirit and affords different levels of respect accordingly.  And ‘sacred’ mountains with stupas are off-limits for women because of the belief (that I read was imported into Mongolia from Tibetan Buddhism) that the menstrual cycle made women бузар: dirty, filthy, ignominious.  The claim that dirt and wood for the fire was gathered from the ‘God’ mountain and that the banning of women was thus in order to keep the ceremony ‘undefiled’ was the justification for why women could not participate in this centennial governmental celebration.

The Patriarchal Backlash

The ceremony seems incredibly ironic to me especially because of the actual state of women’s participation in Mongolian society. As many of the Mongolian article writers I have read on this subject are not reticent to point out; women dominate this country.  Mongolian women are everywhere, which makes their exclusion from government affairs that much more poignant.

Because of their high rates of education and obviously salient presence in society, modern Mongolian women and their reinvention of Mongolian traditional gender roles seem to be undergoing a backlash.  As women gain more footing and prove capable of maintaining both the traditionally ‘female’ roles of child-rearing and domestic work, as well as the traditionally ‘male’ roles of bread-earning and public participation, very masculine Mongolian men seem to be clambering and overly asserting the last bastions of masculinity.

Negating the feminine: Male adorers lines up to bow in front of the fire of the Mongolian people.

And the Mongolian parliament is one such bastion. Since the opening of Mongolia reinvented what it meant to be a woman, the number of Mongolian women in parliament has dropped to three, especially after the 2007 revocation of the article stipulating a 30-percent women’s quota in government (this has now been reinstated at 20 percent for the upcoming election).

Thus, the ritual seemed so ironically symbolic to me.  This ceremony, which took place on the exact day of a traditionally exclusively female fire sacrament, involved the bowing of only ‘pure’ men, in a yurt, in the parliament building, in traditional costumes, in front of the symbolic fiery ‘soul’ of Mongolia, fueled by the dirt of the God mountain of the angry soldiers of Genghis Khan… concepts of tradition and nature (unclean menstrual blood, sacred mountain dirt) were being (mis)used to show that women had never and will never belong at all.

Male Mongolian parliament members crouch in satisfaction in the yurt inside the Grand Khural chamber hall.

This event illustrated Mongolian patriarchy well in that it took a symbolically and traditionally feminine act, the lighting of the hearth, and a female-only ritual, masculinized them and thus whole-heartedly negated and rejected the female element within them. AND made it look ‘traditional.’

The Mongolian male parliament members sent an important message on that day: the complete symbolic barring of women or Mongolian femininity from governmental participation.

Side note: The upside of this event is that Mongolian women now have a very clear and well-defined example of the discrimination against them in government.  Accordingly, several women’s right’s NGOs, including Monfemnet and Young Women for Change, are now in deliberation or in the process of enacting discrimination suits against the Mongolian government.  You go girls!

******

Before I forget, I had the crazy experience this weekend of getting my first real exposure to the Mongolian Nazi skinhead community while at a metal concert.  If such things interest you, the photos from the concert can be found here.

The opinions in this blog reflect solely the personal opinions of the blogger and in no way represent the Fulbright Association, the Mongolian National University, the Free University Berlin, nor the Mongolian United States Embassy.

Soviet Style Beauty: Tsogzolmaa and Suvd

Hey lovelies! I can’t believe this year in Mongolia is almost over, and I *of course* came back from Korea and got super sick. But since I can still read (thank god!) and walk, I have been spending the previous few weeks getting ready for talks, and immersed in books, transcriptions, and 12^th century adventurist writings.

Since I am a firm believer in the embodiment of gender norms through beauty ideals in any society, I thought it would be interesting for me to track down some beauty icons during Mongolia’s long and intense Soviet stage to see if the policy of gender equality had any significant effect on concepts of beauty during that time period.  I was also really interested in comparing concepts of beauty during the Soviet era to modern concepts, to see how radically everything changed in the last 20 years once the country ‘opened’ to the West.

Mongolian Communist Gender History

A little gender history for those who don’t know the first thing about Mongolia’s Soviet era (and I am guessing there are a lot of you), Mongolia, or the Mongolian People’s Republic, formed with support from the Soviet Union in 1924.  This traditionally nomadic, pastoralist society then underwent the Soviet-style process of collectivization of property in a novel way; they collectivized all livestock into agricultural cooperatives called nedgels.  Each person was required to complete a certain set of work units in the nedgel each week: men had 150 work hours, and women, 100.

The open party line was of absolute gender equality (Mongolia’s second constitution of 1940 stipulated that citizens’ rights be enjoyed by both sexes, and outlawed polygyny) and the nedgel did raise women’s position in various ways (education, work, maternity leave).  However, the work divide was highly gendered and “women became worker-mothers with double work while men had a higher-status role to play.” And women were commonly seen as ‘weaker,’ while men with harder, dirty jobs were commonly compensated by being officially recognized as state heroes (Ashwin 2000).

Iconic Mongolian Communist Beauty

Ok, so obviously it wasn’t absolute gender parity, but it did re-traditionalize women’s roles and conceptions of beauty in Mongolia.  So, I decided to try to track down two of the icons of beauty during Mongolian’s Soviet era, Tsogzolmaa and her daughter, Suvd, to see how they felt about beauty, body and women’s roles.

Tsogzolmaa was born in 1924, at the turn of the revolution, and is considered by many Mongolians to be the pinnacle of Mongolian Soviet era beauty. She starred in the movie Tsogt Taij (“The Spirited Knight”..?) in 1945. Her daughter, Suvd, born in 1948, was the lead in the film Mandukhai Tsetsen Hatan (“Wise Queen Mandukhai”) in 1989.  I am constantly told everywhere I go that they were then and are still considered two of the most beautiful women in Mongolia.

Yes, Mongolia is small enough that through two degrees of separation you can obtain the phone  number of practically anyone in the country, even the most famous of Mongolians (I kinda love this). So, I got in contact with Tsogzolmaa through a teacher’s grandmother, but Tsogzolmaa (who was born in 1924 when Mongolia became the ‘republic’ and is now at the tender age of 88) has been too sick to go anywhere or see anyone.  However, she gave us her daughter’s number without hesitation, and so I follow with a few quotes from my interview with Suvd, and a few from a similar interview on beauty and fashion done with Tsogzolmaa a few years ago.

Let me just say that this was the easiest interview I have ever done. Usually I have to sometimes wrestle answers out of taciturn people, but all I did was tell Suvd what I was doing and she proceeded to talk for 20 minutes. (Note: The lovely Nomin helped me transcribe, and the translations are mine, altered a bit to sound better in English).

On the standards of beauty in Mongolia during her time:

“According to the traditional Mongolian standard of beauty, a good demeanor and an intelligent mind are highly regarded. This may possibly be the case all over the world. Also, especially to Mongolians, a person’s status was traditionally really important.”

About physical appearance during that time:

Tsogzolmaa herself is the archetype of Mongolian communist beauty as she described: "A woman with a big face, narrow eyebrows, and red cheeks was esteemed as beautiful."

“Each group of people on this earth has their own conception of beauty.  According to tradition, Mongolians like round faces, complexions white as snow, and a round faced woman was looked at a lot, for example. External forms of beauty change with the times.”

You can compare this to the similar answer given by her mother (who is only 24 years older):

About the standards for women of your time?

In my time, women only really looked at the face and clothing. It’s not like now. Well-defined eyebrows, red cheeks like fruit, etc. were sung about. A woman with a big face, narrow eyebrows, and red cheeks was esteemed as beautiful.

On the changes in beauty ideals through globalization:

“Now, a great deal of beauty standards are becoming similar, since economies are universalizing through globalization, and thus things are carried out the same way all over the world. Through globalization, [Mongolian] beauty standards are now changing to the way it is in other countries, which I don’t like. And thus, my daughters are now aspiring to be thin, have long legs, and be slender… they really have been trying to conform themselves to this standard.”

“However, Mongolians on average still don’t overly look at the external appearance, which is a vestigial of our traditions, and is still lingering on. Now, percentage wise, I would say it’s about 50/50. Generally, the focus on the external appearance is rising… if people all around the world become the same it is incredibly boring.  Everything is heading towards this, I think this world lifestyle is boring and we are all going in this direction and thus life is becoming very boring to me. I live like this now, I went to America and lived like this and to Germany and lived like this, and it is all the same. There is nothing interesting or novel about it. Everywhere there are super thin girls who live similarly, all wear the same clothing, have the same face, have had plastic surgery, and children watch the same films like “Tom and Jerry,” and as soon as we all become like this, I feel there will be nothing interesting left. Now everyone has plastic surgery and gets the same eyes, the same nose, etc. When I now watch films, I can’t tell the difference between the contemporary actresses, I can’t tell who is who.”

Suvd's almond shaped eyes are her trademark, but would not be considered beautiful by today's standards.

On the evils of the modern media:

I asked if she agreed with the statement that beauty was much more internal during the Soviet era in Mongolia, and has now become much more external, especially in the city:

“I agree, I agree. We are now in the transition phase. During our era, the country was closed, right? We didn’t have the opportunity to see foreigner singers, like the beetles, and watch foreign movies….there wasn’t a lot that was allowed. And the blocked stuff was super interesting to us, and we would find it, listen, and watch anything we could… [but] we knew that these forms of media were part of its system and connected to it…. It was promoted to us as bad, so when we watched it we could see the good and the bad elements to it and view it objectively. Now, generally, this media is contemporary and supposedly all good, none of it is bad anymore, so like water, it can’t be filtered and 100 percent of it gets in.”

On why it is important for Mongolian women to maintain their appearance:

“There is this Mongolian wise phrase, maybe you know it: You enter the yurt through the husband’s name, but how you leave the yurt is dependent on the wife’s name (This implies that the husband is the public sphere and allows you to enter, but the care you receive and the respect you show is up to the wife). In this manner (needing to care but also entertain), a woman gets pleasure from being both internally and externally beautiful… her mind is sharp, her mien expressive, and the external is not only her complexion, but also her clothing…a woman’s external must be maintained…[which they] learn from a young age, and has been the custom until now.”

Suvd: Considered by many to be one of the most beautiful Mongolian women.

On why, despite women’s increased education, most power positions are occupied by Mongolian men:

“I also think this is connected to tradition…usually Mongolian women have regarded their husbands as higher and superior. The husbands, in return, highly respect and cherish their wives. But these days, the higher ones are propelled to the top. This is our psychology, and women still consider their sons as superior… yes, this is tradition.”

My follow up question: So, because of that traditional respect, it’s still easier for men to become members of parliament than it is for women?

“Yes, maybe. It is possible.”

****

Recently while in Korea, I had the impression that a lot of people I was encountering had very black and white images of what women and men think of as beautiful.  Maybe it is because I am locked away in this country where the female bonding ritual of ‘fat talk’ between women (you know the type: “omg I look so fat in this,” “omg no you don’t, but I do in this,” “on shutup you look fantastic” etc.) is something non-existent, and I have thus become overly sensitized.  Anyway, some of the statements I heard about all women supposedly wanting to be thin, and diet, and be pretty got to me, and these two answers from Tsogzolmaa were geared towards this (as well as the above statements from Suvd):

Normally all women proclaim that they are fat. Did the women from your time say this?

I was quite large at one point: 80 kilos. In order to get thinner, I worried a lot and after doing a lot of strength activities in my home, I automatically got thinner. Getting thinner was a subject for the woman of my time. Athletes officially were made to do a lot and worried a lot. During our time excessively large people didn’t exist.

Can you name what influenced the measurements of female beauty?

One side of the standard was we thought that if we just used natural things, everything was ok. A peaceful disposition, joy was important. It was called an ‘unhurried disposition.’ The other side was that eating a lot wasn’t good, and using a lot of make-up was said to be bad, especially when older. And being overly thin was also inappropriate.

So what is Soviet beauty?

So, in general it seems that Mongolian women thought about their appearance during the Soviet era, but not nearly as obsessively and externally as (city) women do now. Being thin might have been a topic, but excessive thinness was not viewed positively, and most appearance factors focused solely on the face (round), the skin (white with red cheeks), and the eyebrows.

This is super interesting when you consider that the most commonly operated on body parts in modern Mongolia are the eyes (to make them bigger – which wasn’t even a topic 20 years ago!), the nose, and the lips. The focus on which body parts are considered important amongst Mongolians have changed radically in the last 20 years with the free-market.

But throughout the two interviews, both women continually stressed the internal and collective nature of beauty; Tsogzolmaa in her longer interview talks about several women who were considered georgeous in her day due to their behavior, but did not try to dress up and look overtly feminine.  To this day, when I ask others why Tsogzolmaa and Suvd are considered knockouts, they tell me it is because of the respect they show others and their demeanors.  They have ‘royal’ demeanors; when I interviewed Suvd, she had this way of folding her hands, tilting her head, and smiling in a very fuzzy, warm motherly way. Really, their attraction then and now to all Mongolians is that they are nice-looking, peaceful, classic and warm people; nothing sexy, showy or dangerous about it.

Suvd went on a nice long rant about the evils of media and how Western media is changing beauty standards, which I appreciated. As someone who has been considered a beauty icon and had a mother who was a beauty icon, she has been inundated and surrounded by this topic since day one. So, her ascertainment of beauty in Mongolia as transitioning due to global market processes making universal beauty standards uniform, is accurate and refreshing (that I am not the only one saying this stuff!).

The opinions in this blog reflect solely the personal opinions of the blogger and in no way represent the Fulbright Association, the Mongolian National University, the Free University Berlin, nor the Mongolian United States Embassy.

Westernization of the Mongolian Media

Шинэ жилийн мэнд хүргье (happy new year) to all!

I am back from Korea, re-energized and ready to make the descent into my last two months here in Mongolia (at least for this stint). I told myself I wasn’t going to do any research while on ‘vacation,’ but (I guess you can’t take the research out of the researcher) the lightness with which many Korean women evinced their plastic surgery stories baffled me.  Western, free-market ideals seem to drastically affect the role of women and the perception of female beauty in every culture they impact, yet unique to the cultural and historical context. In the case of South Korea, it has lead to the highest rates of plastic surgery per capita in the world (esp. for eyelid surgery).

For a great article on the portrayal of gender role stereotypes with Western and Korean models in Korean media, click here.

Is this where Mongolia is heading? I recently collected about 500 surveys from Mongolian students in the countryside (so mostly herder kids) and in the city, which depicted a set of five different ethnic eyes (Latin, Scandinavian, African, Asian with eyelid, Asian without eyelid).  When prompted to answer which eye was the most beautiful, a whopping 80 percent of both the city and countryside students chose either the Latin or Scandinavian eye (with the results seemingly split between them). Only 5 percent chose the most classic of Asian eyes (without the double eyelid) and that in combination with the statement one of my interviewees gave recently – namely that “Asian eyes are ugly” – has led me to ask what skewed women’s perceptions so severely against themselves? You tend to psychologically favor what you see the most, so why the overwhelming preference for what is ethnically unobtainable?

A "Goodali" (fashion magazine) cover of a model choking herself - not innocuous in a country with high rates of domestic abuse.

As the above article on Korean media mentions, Caucasian women represent around .01 percent of the Korean population, yet are depicted in around 40 percent of Korean advertisements. I would hazard to guess that the numbers are about the same here. And the power of the global advertising market to not only push specific (Caucasian) beauty ideals, but furthermore to almost exactly imitate the same gendered norms in advertising across the globe astounds me.

This is what I mean: These are Mongolian T.V. advertisements we (YWC – Young Women for Change and I) recently used in our beauty image workshop; just in case you thought that the battle regarding the hyper-sexualized and violent depictions of women in advertising was solely a Western phenomenon…

Here is a very gender norm stereotypical French “1 Million” perfume ad:

and its Mongolian ‘Bolor Vodka’ counterpart:

Just replace Western actors with Mongolian ones: A global advertising agency’s dream.

The Gender Politics of Alcohol

In my previous post, I talked about how drinking and smoking in Mongolian society traditionally have very strong masculine connotations. Well, to support that notion, it seems that the industry in Mongolia that has the most sexualized, gender stereotypical advertisements is the alcohol industry.  Anyone who has ever watched superbowl commercials can not help but notice the similarity these ads have to Western beer commercials…

Woman = beer bottle in this advertisement with four top Mongolian models (including Odgerel):

This advertisement for a dutch beer, “Bavaria,” is super new (just a few months old) and super infuriating *cough*:

Mongolian standard (for women)?  w/ Urantsetseg

Seriously, West, what are you exporting?

Culture Clashes Part III: Tradition or Patriarchy?

SOOOOOOOO much has happened in my life (again!), but I decided a few weeks ago that I wanted to do a series of entries on culture clashes.  Well, in my recent travels I again found myself in instances contrary to my belief in gender equality where I asked “why? Why?!” and got “well, that’s just the way it is. It’s tradition,” as a response.

So this entry is about these instances of ‘tradition’ that leave behind a sour taste in my mouth.  So, is it tradition, or is it patriarchy?  You decide:

Traditional Gender Roles Meet Modernity

Эхнэр нөхрийн эрхэм үүрэг: (the wife’s and husband’s important duties)

• Гадаах ажлыг эр нь мэднэ external, public work the man knows
• Гарах орохыг эм нь мэднэ go out and in the woman knows (this refers to women traditionally leaving the father’s house for the husband’s house when she gets married)
• Саадаг нумыг эр нь мэднэ the quiver and bow the man knows
• Сааль савыг эм нь мэднэ dishware the woman knows
• Аян жинг аав нь мэднэ trade and travel the dad knows
• Ааль  аашийг  ээж нь мэднэ family disposition the mom knows
• Ардаг догшныг аав нь мэднэ the inexperienced and wild dad knows
• Авах гээхийг ээж нь мэднэ to get and lose mom knows (referring to children)

- found in “намжил, Т. Монгол гэр бүл. Улаанбаатар: 1999”

"Mandukhai the Wise" is a very famous movie depicting the life of queen Mandukhai in the 15th century. Here she is seen sitting next to her husband, Manduul Khan. Her place next to her husband is considered self-evident to many and she is respected in Mongolian popular culture for it.

Even though the gender role descriptions above might seem archaic to some, it is important to keep in mind that Mongolians are very keen on tradition (and nomadism is still widespread!), and thus old gender roles are very much relevant to contemporary gender norms in Mongolia.

A few weeks ago when I was with Zaya in the hotel owner’s house (I discussed this in previous entries), I was trying to pass through a narrow opening between a chair someone was sitting in and the wall.  Suddenly, all the women in the room let out a huge gasp (I think it is appropriate to point out that it was the women who gasped) and covered their mouths in shock and horror, and I looked at them quizzically.  Looking down, I saw that the youngest child, a boy (around 1), was sitting on the floor between my legs staring confused at me.  I realized that I had just committed a grave offense; I had inadvertently stepped over the only male child of the household, which was akin to wishing his death.

Zaya said to me: “You just stepped over their child…and their first-born male!”

I suppose the most culturally sensitive reaction to this is to apologize profusely.  Which I did.  But I admit…I was a little peeved that this was such a big deal.

I know in the aforementioned example it is not ok to step over anyone in traditional culture, but because it was their male child, it was especially severe.  It is just one of the many many many cultural regulations in traditional Mongolian households (thus, stronger in the countryside) that preserve the symbolic superiority of men in the family and are readily maintained by women (thus the round of female gasping).  Some other examples:

• When you visit a household and give a gift, it must be given to the husband (since he is the head).
• When food is served, no one can eat until the male has started.  And if the oldest male is not there, even the youngest boy has to eat before any of the women (regardless of age) can eat.
• In the yurt/ger, the back right part of the ger is considered the male sitting area and it is considered the higher, elevated part of the ger.  The female area is front right and is considered the lower part.  In Mongolian, to move or sit in the higher area is described as moving up (дээшээ сууж) and to sit towards the female area is moving down (доошоо сууж).  Family members are not supposed to sit higher than the head of household (the male).  People still sit in these divides, even in modern apartments where the divide in some households has been adjusted to apartment form.
• Furthermore, Zaya – as a Mongolian mother – was treated accordingly in every family we lived with.  I – as a foreigner – was a bit exempt, but she was woken up at the crack of dawn to chase after kids, constantly told to make food and barely allowed to rest.  As a woman, she was forced into this role over and over again, even though she was not a member of the family.  I told her to just refuse to look after the kids the next time, but she said, “You want to do your research and not get kicked out, don’t you? That’s just the way it is here.”

I am not going to describe more than these right now (there are lots of little nuances along these lines), but I think they are sufficient to illustrate my point.  There are many things that regulate symbolic dominance in the household that are done passively and considered matter-of-fact in many Mongolians’ lives.  Women are relegated to the domestic and childrearing sphere, congratulated profusely when they ‘find’ a boyfriend, and continue many traditions (through spatial & role divides, linguistic divides and customs) that maintain the male dominance in the home.  And when I ask women why they do it, I get told it is tradition.

Speaking of tradition and gender:

Alcohol and Masculinity

Vodka is frequently the inebriant of choice - a gift from the Soviet Union

Today I was walking down the street in the center of town when I saw a well-dressed, yet disheveled-looking man stumbling towards me.  Upon realizing he was drunk and yelling “shar uctei xuuhen, shar uctei xuuxen!” (blonde girl, blonde girl – I am blonde in relation to Mongolians), I bolted into the nearest entrance, which happened to be a cheap woman’s clothing store.  The guy stumbled through the door after me – mumbling something about guns and bullets and foreigners – when I turned in this store surrounded by seven elder and very shocked women and yelled in Mongolian “Get out! I don’t want to talk to you!”  Promptly all seven women swooped down as if in a swarm of motherly birds and placed themselves between me and the drunken man, yelling at him in Mongolian to go and calling him various names.

After the women forced him to leave, one woman checked the street to make sure the coast was clear and another escorted me to the next corner as a bodyguard, and I felt like I just been ‘rescued’ by a bunch of old grannies.

This event illustrates very well my understanding of alcohol in this country, including the highly gendered and custom-laden aspects of its usage and abuse.

In the above-listed traditional delineation of what it means to be a woman and a man in a Mongolian family, the man’s role is clearly a public one that includes finance, i.e. being the ‘bread-winner.’  The expectation that the male in the household should have a sturdy, firm hand and control over the family, which includes being able to financially support the family is still very prevalent in the countryside of Mongolia.  Yet in this developing economy, where education is the key to success (and women comprise the majority of the educated class) and both men and women are forced to work to maintain a family, these gender roles are being turned on their head.

Through the course of my research, I have seen that both alcohol and tobacco usage seem to have a very gendered aspect.  Obviously, the association of both of these ‘vices’ with masculine traits – being independent, strong, determined, fearless, wild and kick-ass (think Marlboro man)– are universal.  Tie in the fact that smoking and drinking were traditional acts done amongst Mongolian men in nomadic society as a form of public relationship building (passing the tobacco bottle), and you have an action that is traditionally and modernly connoted with masculinity.  A dangerous combination.

Especially in UB, where employment for both parents is important for survival, that fact that women are on average more highly educated and capable of getting a job has serious implications.  Many men I have encountered express regret at not being able to live up to the traditional roles expected of them and drown out their sorrows in alcohol:

• This summer in Dalanzadgad, I lived with a young family (around 28) who had just received their first child. The wife of the family was a teacher with a steady job at a local school, and had been to college. Her husband had neither, occasionally working as a driver when he found a client. His disappointment at not being able to fully provide for his family and be a ‘man’ – as he told me in an interview – drove him to disappear a lot with his friends, in order to get away.  At one point during our stay there, he disappeared for almost a week, turning off his phone and never calling to say where he was. His wife had no clue and was worried, but he showed up a week later, saying he had been ‘out’ with his friends (he had been on a drinking binge, going from one nomadic family to the next drinking fermented mare’s milk). When she got angry, he yelled back at her and she gave up, saying it was just how men were.
• The wife of the hotel owner was exasperated with the fact that her husband was drunk around 80 percent of the time.  On the day we stayed with the family, her husband had disappeared on a drinking spree with his friends and had also turned off his phone.  He said that as a result of his success, it was necessary for him to go out, drink and hold parties to maintain public favor.  He was always drunk, and his wife, left at home running after two kids, expressed exasperation at being forced to look after kids without help, while her husband ran around throwing parties and drinking.  On our last day, Zaya and I sat in the hotel lobby when the wife rushed in asking if we had seen her husband.  He had disappeared again.  When we said no, she left whispering she wanted a divorce.
• When we were living with a nomad family outside of Arvaiheer, we woke up one night to screaming in the next yurt.  The wife of the man in the next yurt (ger) had gotten so fed up with his drinking that she tried to stab him in the night.  He had apparently not received any money for months, but got some cash from a local company for his help that day, which he drank away in a day.  Although, I think this example is important to show that Mongolian women fight back too.
• There are many many other examples; i.e. a drunken old nomad in the bus from one aimag center who yelled at all the women in the bus for not respecting him since he was old and a male.  He yelled at me, accusing me of working for a mining company and manipulating Mongolians, and he yelled at Zaya for supposedly being manipulated and loud.  He ended up, in his frustration, hitting Zaya and another girl on the head with a vodka bottle when we complained about him smoking in the bus.

So my theory is –which I haven’t been able to check since there is no research on this and it isn’t my personal project- is that Mongolian men frequently use alcohol in this country because of its masculine connotations (success, public sphere, etc.).  In a changing economy, where women and men are capable of being able to work and be educated, the loss of the traditional dominant public masculine sphere has driven many men to supplement the failure of the masculine role by symbolically enacting masculinity in other ways, aka alcohol usage.  And thus there is a rise in male drunkenness – and unfortunately as a result of this – abuse towards women.

And upon asking the wife of these men as to their husband’s alcohol usage, I frequently hear “it’s just how it is” or “it’s just how men are.”

Modern difference feminism – Hatan uhaan (Queen intelligence)

Mongolian queens

Most foreigners living in Mongolia have heard the stories of royal Mongolian women saving the day and uniting the country.  Chinggis Khan’s greatest allies were his wife and mother, he gave many lands to his daughters to control, Sorqaghtani Beki (a widow of a khan) manipulated and controlled Mongolian politics for 23 years, Queen Manduhai successfully raised and united the country under one khan through her skill on the battlefield, and, as the legend goes, Princess Aigiarm never married, because no man could ever defeat her in wrestling.  That is also the reason for why Mongolian wrestlers currently wear a traditional outfit that leaves the breast open, so that no woman could disguise herself and win (which they had done!).

The point is Mongolian women are no strangers to the idea that women can be powerful, intelligent, and cunning. But this power has always come within the sphere mentioned above – as the partner or supporter to a male, a khan or head of household.  And this current growing awareness amongst women – tied with the need for women to work and gender roles to ‘modernize’ – has lead to the rise of a popular difference feminist movement, “үгүйлэгдсэн ухаан” (missing intelligence), otherwise known as “хатан ухаан” or queen intelligence.

The figurehead of the movement - Ariunaa

Ariunaa, a very famous Mongolian singer (also a spokeswoman for the communist party… coincidence?), recently spearheaded a movement, TV show, and congressional committee meeting discussing the formation of the studies and support for ‘queen intelligence.’

According to them, as inspired by the aforementioned powerful Mongolian queens, women should equally aspire to be the ‘queens’ of their families and promote ‘queen intelligence.’  This stream of thought states:

-          Women are fundamentally different than men, i.e. they are naturally more nurturing, peaceful and equitable, thus less corrupt than men

-          Government could benefit from having more women, because it would correct a lot of the current problems by adding a more nurturing touch, i.e. pursuance of education reform, more socially minded laws

-          Women shouldn’t simply ‘relegate’ themselves to position number two, but should rather take pride and become the supporter of the family (the queen to the king, the neck to the head)

-          One of the most important things for women is to become intelligent, because they need to pass on that intelligence to their kids to make them positive societal actors

The historian Naranbuu (Н.Нагаанбуу) in describing his approval of queen intelligence:

“I wish for women to be second. I want to be first in my home. I don’t want my kids to carry the name of their mother. Women and men are different, and queen intelligence fits wonderfully into this second position. Throughout Mongolian history, women always lost favor when they tried to become number one.  When women become the mayor of a sum (like a province), something is missing.”

D. Arvin, one of the current three female Mongolian parliament members (apparently queen intelligence is popular amongst the few female parliament members):

“The mother needs to pass on knowledge regarding life to her kids.  However, today’s mothers don’t carry out their commitment to teach their kids morals, they give their kids to kindergarten and school. The community isn’t developing well, because people’s knowledge isn’t being utilized (implying women’s unique knowledge). There was enough time to give birth to rulers, raise them, and implant queen knowledge in [earlier queen’s] minds.”

Obviously, many people will identify this as difference feminism (although Naranbuu might be pushing that) – the idea that men and women are fundamentally different, but that women’s activities should be promoted to balance a society dominated by male approaches to problems.  By promoting women and reintroducing the mothering, nurturing hand, those problems should supposedly be corrected.

I don’t agree with this, but I can totally understand why this form of feminism is finding resonance amongst Mongolian women in light of the gendered circumstances discussed above.  The idea of queen knowledge gives those women who want to pursue a career and modern ideals of equality a way to uphold these morals in a way true to Mongolian traditional culture.  AND they get to throw in Chinghis Khan’s name to boot to lend the argument veracity.  A win win.

Obviously, the anthropologist in me feels a pang of doubt when I express my disapproval at gender roles in a culture not my own.  But alone the fact that in a society where women are much more educated than men, only 3.9 percent of parliament members are women reflects a failing of this equal, but different argument.

So… is it tradition or patriarchy?

(Und so nebenbei für all diejenigen, die sich für Gender in der Mongolei interessieren.  Ein Zeitungsartikel über die Frauenrechtsorganisation, mit der ich aktuell zusammenarbeite, wurde neulich im Luxemburger Wort veröffentlicht.  Klicken Sie hier, um den Artikel über unsere “Young Women for Change” zu lesen!)

Hey Girl, Love Yourself!: The Cult of Body Image Obsession in UB

After all I have written about nomad and countryside beauty, you might be wondering if Mongolian women have any real beauty image problems at all.  I mean a Mongolian nomad woman is ostensibly totally appreciated!  She’s told constantly that she is beautiful, that her internal qualities matter more than her external, she has tons and tons of songs written about how fantabulous she is, and the concept of beauty she lives up to is a totally realistic expectation.

So, if nomadism teaches women and men that being large, capable, and natural are positive and beautiful qualities, why are UB women some of the best-dressed, fanciest, thinnest and high-maintenanced women I have seen in my entire life?  Going from the country to the city is like taking a leap through time and has left me contemplating what exactly it is about modernity, which has transformed fat-loving, custom-laden, internal beauty-focused nomadic women into fashionistas on high-heels.

What changed on the way from the steppe to the city?

So, my city interview phase has started.  And last week, I had the opportunity to interview a woman who had been in a pretty famous Mongolian band the last ten years, who I thought could give me some insight into the intensity of body pressures inherent in Mongolian city life.

I asked her what is considered attractive, and she told me that for a man it didn’t matter how he looked in the slightest.  If a man had a good heart and personality she would marry him.  And the other woman in this conversation agreed completely with this statement.

Odgerel: Former mongolian top model also well known for her extensive plastic surgery.

So, I asked her if this also applies for women. Both women shook their heads.  “Nope, definitely not,” she said.  She told me that many people don’t even take a woman seriously if she doesn’t look attractive, and by ‘attractive’ I mean dressed to the nines.  When a woman wears make-up, people treat her differently, she said, and there is a direct effect on her success.  And when this singer personally goes out the door without make-up and expensive clothes on, everyone she encounters on the street gapes in horror and then the media start talking about her “fall from grace.” Like, OMG what happened to her? She was once so…. successful.

The extreme double-standard existent amongst Mongolian urban women is that to gain ‘success’ a woman has to not only be well-educated, well-mannered, sympathetic and friendly, she has to look incredibly good.  She needs to have the newest and right brand of purse, cell-phone, a popular phone number (a phenomenon in many Asian countries), expensive jacket and high-heels, and she needs to show it.  Her looks are her worth.  A man’s is his mind.

A woman who is not physically beautiful can not be and is not considered successful, period.

So, how did this change happen?  Who’s the culprit?

The capital city of Mongolia is not, like the countryside, largely affected by nomadism and tradition, but more so affected by the free-market and foreign cultural influences.  The countryside and the city of Mongolia are really two completely different worlds, and the beauty and body maintenance of women are a representation of this divide.

A lot of urban Asian women are going through the unique congruence of stresses formed when the ‘traditional’ East meets the free-market West to create a uniquely precarious and dangerous body image security situation.

In the case of Mongolia: Even amongst Mongolian nomads, women were traditionally handed over to the husband’s family like an object of exchange and unable to maintain any public duties.  Amongst the beauty ideals of shapely, natural, hard-working, and sympathetic women, were ones describing dutiful, well-behaved, traditional, and quiet Mongolian women.  Mongolian nomadic women were traditionally confined to an incredibly rigid gender divide that made her domain almost exclusively the felt walls of the yurt and never expanded beyond that.  Don’t get me wrong, that was her domain and her invaluable work was highly regarded amongst nomads (thus the tons and tons and TONS of songs about how amazing mom is), but this leaves NO room for dissent or divergence from this role.

The traditionally nomadic divided roles of female and male, private and public, respectively, have permeated Mongolian psyches so extensively that it makes it hard for city women, even though they are extensively better educated than men in Mongolia, to gain any type of recognition in the public sphere.  The concept that men are naturally better equipped to handle public duties is so strong that women have to outdo men in almost every capacity to gain equal footing.

Women not in the yurt??! crazy talk.

Furthermore, capitalism came… and the media.

The lovely ideals of meritocracy (that our success is directly dependent on how much we work at it) and consumerism inherent in free-market media displays lots of pictures in Mongolia (and around Asia) of thin, intensily body-focused, attractive white women buying, consuming and eating their way to happiness.  The result is that the MORE access to modern forms of media (television, magazines, bill-boards, etc.) the LESS secure a Mongolian woman is about her own body image and the more she is pushed to consume along certain lines to increase physical attractiveness.

Here are some examples of how I came to this conclusion:

1) In the countryside, no woman gets plastic surgery nor considers it.  Nomadic traditions are still very strong and she also has next to no access to computers, internet, magazines, and only T.V. exposure.

2) However, my first nomadic home-stay mother from the Gobi did tell me that she had never thought about make-up or beauty until she got T.V.  Then, after realizing that according to T.V. she needed makeup, she drove the 35 km into the nearest town to order some beauty products.  Her husband still thinks this is ridiculous and unnecessary as a nomadic woman and tells her to please take if off whenever she uses it.

3) In the shantytown-esque yurt districts around UB: The poorer a girl seemed to be (in my interviews) and thus the more unable she was to have a working television or able to access any form of media, the LESS insecure she was about her body and the more she loved her own beauty.

4) However, the city does provide them with some rising ‘luxeries’ and pressures:  Some of the girls in my interviews told me that around 1/3 of all girls in the yurt districts (these are POOR women) also have had blepheroplasty, aka eyelid surgery to make the eyes bigger, and they get them done illegally for dirt cheap at district clinics.

5) And amongst middle to upper class urban city women: There are no statistics about this, but from my interviews and general impressions I would say that about one-third of all women graduating from high-school in UB right now have had the double eyelid surgery or nose bridge restructuring to make the nose more prominent.

6) When I went to interview a plastic surgeon nurse last week who works exclusively with wealthier women, she told me that the most popular surgeries are blepharoplasty (eyelid surgery to make the eyes bigger), rhinoplasty (the elevation of the nose-bridge) and the shaving off of extra jaw bone to give the jaw a pointier look (not round).  Besides larger eyes, none of these beauty ideals have any root in Mongolian traditional culture.

Undral: A top Mongolian model. Which part of her screams Mongolian to you?

7) Furthermore, if you look at a Cosmopolitan Mongolia or Goodali or some other prominent Mongolian women’s magazine around 70 percent of the models are Caucasian – a media form only city women have access to.

In the city, female physical attractiveness = success.

So, a Mongolian city woman, who is inherently disadvantaged through traditional society in public roles, needs to not only outdo men in intelligence and education, she needs to consume, consume, consume to maximize her physical (Western-influenced) attractiveness, and by default, success.  Women are left with the belief that they are only worth as much as their appearance gives others the impression they are worth.

Note: I am also not trying to say that women who get plastic surgery are trying to look white.  No, they all say they are trying to look more beautiful and increase self-confidence.  Yes, 30 percent of Asian women naturally have a double-lidded bigger eye, but this is more than that: This is Western brand clothing and chins and eyes and face shape and blue contact lenses and heightening surgery and intense body fixation.  WHERE did these ideals of beauty come from and WHAT makes some Mongolian city women have a lack of self-confidence in the first place?

This is a quote from a blog I found recently on gender, feminism and pop culture in Korea that discusses the issue of the plastic surgery amongst Korean women and why they have the highest rates of plastic surgery per capita in the world:

“Why did those certain aspects become what was “Beautiful?” when it wasn’t before? Although Korean women may not know that they are changing their eyes based on white standards of beauty, (in fact many wholeheartedly believe the double eyelid surgery is tailored to make Asian eyes more beautiful) single-lidded eyes were problematized because of confrontations with the West and now it has become so commonplace in Korea that these origins have been forgotten and it is now a natural thing to think. That single lidded small eyes are ugly and big dopey eyes are pretty and that is just the way it is because they are told that and they consume that every day of their lives.”

And thus… you are left with chin, nose and/or eyelid operated-on Mongolian urbanite fashionistas on high-heels.

We are trying to combat this.

So, we have a plan.  Before I went to Hovsgol, I had the opportunity of drafting and implementing the first “Love Yourself: Women’s Body and Beauty Image Workshop” together with the women at the Young Women’s Club.

The point behind this workshop is to give urban women in UB and in other areas in Mongolia knowledge regarding the new stresses they are facing, including increasing their media literacy, see body and beauty as inextricably linked to culture (and thus not universal and pre-determined), and increase their health knowledge and personal self-confidence.  And we are also going to try to create a mini-movie about Mongolian medial portrayals of women, because all of the information available on this issue pretty much comes from the States or from Britain and thus hard for Asian women to relate to.

If all goes according to plan and the funding proposal we are currently working on goes through, I will be spending the next months training women to give this workshop. *cross my fingers*

And doing this workshop with the girls at YWC was very successful and fun, but also shows how much work we need to do… At the beginning of the workshop, we ask the girls to describe what a beautiful woman looks like (to compare their ideal to reality) and they described every SINGLE aspect of the female body (I mean ears, toe-nails, fingers, eye-lids, skin color on face and body, ankle bones, neck EVERYTHING) in such excrutiating detail that I had to wince listening to it.

and i’ll leave you with this fine thang:

'nuff said

Hovsgol: The Mongolian Wild West

I know it has been two months since I have updated – I mentally slap myself on the wrist and will try to avoid that in the future.  I have just been SO BUSY!  Not to mention out of internet reach for the last three weeks since I decided to return to the place that kicked off my whole Mongolia obsession five years ago.  Namely: I returned to Hovsgol to surprise my first homestay family.

Ok, for those who don’t know what I am talking about: I participated in a study abroad program called SIT five years ago (the only study abroad program in Mongolia) that takes small groups of university students to communities of Mongolian nomads and places those students with families for extended periods of time.  In my semester, we had the great fortune of having two extended homestays: one in the northern region of Hovsgol, in an area known as Ulaan Uul (Red Mountain) closs to the Russian border, and the other in Bayankhongor in the Gobi desert.  I am still in contact with the program director and most staff members and thus when I heard that SIT was heading back to this Hovsgolian community with a new group of students, I asked if I could hitch a ride .

Ulaan Uul is in the very most northern part of Mongolia in Siberia where there are no roads and very few people, so getting there required an old-school russian bus (поргон) and over 20 hours of driving through Siberian taiga (if you are lucky and there is no snow as my return trip evinced: it took me around 40 hours to make it back to the city).  It is located in the Darkhan Valley, which is also well known because of the presense of the Tsaatan, reindeer herders, and now because of a recent influx of ninja miners in the mountains.  It is most probably the most beautiful place I have ever been and comparable only to (as a member of Mongolian parliament said to me) Yellowstone National Park or the Alaskan wilderness.

Since my family from five years ago did not have TV or electricity at the time I thought there was no way I could really inform them of my coming.  My plan was originally to just show up and say surprise and see their faces, but since my family was so fantastic, SIT had planned to give them a new student this year.  Thus, I was not ‘allowed’ to live with them, but SIT offered me another family.  So, basically I repeated what I did five years ago with a new family: except this time, I was older, everyone in the community knew me, I decided to do a beauty survey amongst the nomads which required extensive travel between the various families, and last, but by no means least, I can speak Mongolian.

After driving the 15 hours to Mörön (the capital of Hovsgol), picking up the new students, and driving another 7 hours to the local sum

Five years ago: This is a picture of my home-stay mom and dad that I took five years ago.

(district) center and another 1 and half to the remote community where we lived, I found myself entering the same ger (yurt) I had entered five years ago when I was picked up by my home-stay dad on horseback.  I sat down amongst the students and all the Mongolian occupants of the ger starting wispering furtively about the surprise number of students (“Eleven? I thought there were only supposed to be ten??!”).  I had on a scarf, which I used to (I thought surreptitiously, but I now know bogglingly obviously) to cover my piercings.  My family’s gesture for me three years ago was forming their thumb and pointer finger in the sign of a ring and placing it on their lip (I had a fairly big lip ring then), and I thought my piercings were a dead give-away.  So, I sat in the corner with a scarf covering half my face…

Bold (current): My home-stay dad from five years ago. He didn't have a motorbike back then, much less electricity and television, but now greatly enjoys hearding on motorbike.

And my former homestay dad walked in – a wrestler, big guy with his two front teeth missing and a tiny goatee – who sat down next to me, not recognizing, and lit up a cigarette.  Amused, I decided I would just go to their ger and shock them all at once, but my plan was thwarted when my former homestay mother arrived.  Even though I covered half my face, I walked out with the students to get a quick horseback riding tip lesson, at first not realizing that she had been secretively eyeing me and asking everyone who I was.  She waddled after the group of students and from a distance starred at me with a quisical, mustering look…

So, I cracked and ran over to her and their faces light up with recognition and shock and laughter at my badly obvious attempts at covering my face.  (Apparently, she spent the next three weeks telling this story to every visitor to the ger, animatedly imitating my covering attempts).  She then took me by the hand and started leading me to the horses to take me ‘home’ (“well now I have my daughter back, we can go”), but my insistance that they had a ‘new’ student and couldn’t take me home, stopped her.  Instead, I spent the next few weeks riding/walking/motorcycling between the family I was staying with and my former homestay family, learning songs with them (since I could barely speak any Mongolian five years ago, we communicated and bonded through singing) and now being able to communicate ideas about my life and theirs.

It is incredible to now be able to talk to the nomadic families that took me in five years ago and I

Reunited

decided to utilize the opportunity by doing a little beauty survey.  So, while in Hovsgol the last few weeks, I horse-back rode and repeatedly drove the several kilometers between various families, explained my research to the nomads in the area and ended up collecting 20 surveys from them (20 doesn’t sound like much, but the population density of this place is very low) regarding beauty ideals.  Amongst the questions were, of course, what does it mean to be a beautiful woman, but also if this was different than a ‘sexy’ woman, which ellicited a lot of really funny comments from older nomads (“wait.. you mean a sexy woman is not someone who just wants to have sex? aren’t we all sexy?”).  I am not finished evaluating them yet (it is really hard for me to read cursive Mongolian), but cursory looks already reveal what I already knew to be true: that beauty amongst Mongolian nomads is very functional and internal based.  Comments on “what does it mean to be a beautiful woman” included the classic answers, hard-working, well-behaved, well-versed in tradition, commonsensical, good-mother, but also others like “a woman who drinks milk,” “not a miss (beauty pageant) contestant,” and “a humble looking woman.” External physical qualities are almost never mentioned.

So, I guess I can now be sure that the nomadic conception of beauty varys little amongst nomads on complete different sides of the country (since I have now been in the Gobi, in horse-country and in the Siberian extremes), but more so amongst city and countryside.  But I guess I knew that already.

Modernity vs. Nomadicism?

Ulaan Uul is the most isolated place I have ever been – with it taking over 30 hours in an industrial-style Soviet bus over terrain with no roads- to get there.  The Darkhan Valley is relatively protected from the currents of change in the rest of the country, but even the Darkhan are on the cusp of modernity.  Five years ago, my home-stay family and about half of the other families in the valley did not have either electricity or TV, and only a few had motorbikes.  Everything was still done by candle and fire-light, people generally went to sleep and woke up with the sun, and entertainment consisted of card games and singing.  I once asked my home-stay dad if he knew where America was (and Germany for that matter) and still remember very clearly the shrug of his shoulders as an answer.  Why is it important for a nomad in a remote valley to be concerned with America anyway?  I found this super refreshing.

The powers of marketing: Even nomads now drink Pepsi and Cola and discuss which is better.

Now, five years later, all the nomads in the valley have cell phones, TV and electricity.  Television commercials make nomads wonder what these new wonder products are (coca-cola? oriflame beauty products? pepsi?) and they go into town to try them out.  Global warming makes people have to move, because the grasses are getting shorter, and families complain to me about the changing health and increased drunkeness of the nomads since the advent of free-market capitalism.  Entertainment often consists of TV (especially among younger families).  And in the last two years, SIT could not go to this valley, because the discovery of gold in an area 60 km away caused the valley to be overrun with ninja miners who arrived, incured debt for the equipment to search for gold, found some gold, drove up the prices in the area and ruined the nature, and then peaced out as quickly as they came.

What you see in this area is kinda the same old story seen amongst all sorts of indigenous groups the world over once they started adapting to Western capitalism and ‘modernity.’  Rises in modern diseases (cancer, hypertension, high blood-pressure), changes to nature dependent on market forces (mining), break-down of old bonding activities replaced by TV, increased consuption of refined sugars (thank you coca-cola and refined flour) and alcohol abuse.  And with focus on my research, I see these changes reflected in the changes of beauty ideals amongst Mongolians – a gradual but definite spectrum from large, healthy, motherly ideals to skinny, fast, ‘sexy’ ideals the closer you get to the city and sedentary life.

It has kinda left me questioning at the moment if teaching people about Western nutrition (which I had planned to do by creating a health booklet for women before leaving Mongolia) is really the best idea.  The West doesn’t know everything either.

And in case you were wondering, my nomad dad still doesn’t know where America is.

Culture shock

Driving back to UB: Only way we got home was by picking up other busses that got stuck in the snow, helping them, and then forming a chain of busses that helped each other when one got stuck.

Well, now I am back in the city and physically and mentally exhausted.  I separated from SIT a week ago, when they continued to the local lake with their students, and I was left getting back from Ulaan Uul on my own.  And since we live in Mongolia, snow had already fallen between Hovsgol and UB, but, also since we live in Mongolia, that didn’t phase people and drivers decided they wanted to drive through it anyway.  What ensued was a 40 hour Soviet bus ride over Mongolian terrain, mountains, and through cliff-passes in a bus designed for 12 people where we had stuck 17 and which got stuck in the snow at night for 10 hours and had to wait until the snow thawed a bit to keep moving.  Furthermore, we had to get out several times and trudge through the snow pulling on a rope attached to the back of the bus as it went down slopes to make sure it didn’t skid-out and fall off the cliff.  Luckily, we were also in a Soviet bus, because the larger busses has also decided to go, which definitely got stuck and spent over 25 hours stuck in the snow out of any cell-phone range.  These are the vageries of traveling (and doing anything for that matter) in this country.

The constant unpredictability of life here, coupled with language difficulties (my Mongolian is

No, I can't be vegan in the countryside; but there is something to be said (and to be tasted) about drinking the milk you just milked yourself. Totally different way to relate to animals and food.

advanced, but not fluent – so I get confused a lot), extreme cultural differences (which I encountered a lot of while doing my survey with the nomads), and radical changes of dietary routine (I was vegan for five years, went to the countryside for 3 months and lived with 8 different carniverous families, came back to the city and was vegan again, and went back to the country where I drank the yak’s milk I had just milked myself every morning and ate freshly slaughtered marmot), and hygienic circumstance (nomads don’t use soap for washing most things, the word for privacy doesn’t even exist in the Mongolian language, and I have not showered for several weeks repeatedly in the last months) have taken a huge toll on my body.  I have actually never been so repeatedly physically uncomfortable in my life.

I kinda feel like I am physically and mentally tettering between Western ideals and Mongolian nomadic culture and I don’t know which one is right anymore.

My mongolian teacher told me my home-work this weekend was to rest cause I looked so exhausted… oh je.  At least my life in this country is ridiculous.

I hope the lengthiness of this entry has made up some for the silence… I have also drafted another entry about the beauty image workshop Young Women for Change and I held a few weeks ago, which I will post very soon (I promise!)

As previously mentioned, I also spent the last few weeks learning songs from my former nomadic family.  In vein with my research, my former home-stay sister taught me this song about a beautiful woman called монгол бүсгүйн үзэсгэлэн (Mongolian female beauty).  Below is an mp3 with my home-stay sister singing the song, including my (as of now hastily done – I will correct it soon) translation and the cyrillic lyrics, if you are interested.

Харзны ус шиг мэлтэлзсэн     Emotionally contained like the water in an ice hole
Намуун зөөлөн аашаараа     With calm soft temperament
Хараацайн жигvvр шиг тахиралсан     Curved like the wing of a swallow
Нарийн сайхан хөмсгөөрөө     With thin beautiful eyebrows

дахилт (Refrain):

Миний хайрыг татах     Pulls my love
Учиртай төрөө юү     Like the reason you were born
Монгол бүсгуйн үзэсгэлэн     Mongolian female beauty
Улам ч хөөрхөн болгоо юу     Forever becoming prettier

Гурваар дарсан гэзгийг чинь     Your three modest braids
Элбэн таалахад ханамгvй     When caressed calms
Гуалиг тєрсєн биеийг чинь     Your natural graceful body
Налан суухад уйдамгvй     lovely to sit next to

УЙлэнд урнаа илчилсэн     Good at needle-work
Сvмбэн цагаан хуруугаараа     With rod-like, white fingers
Vрийн бvvвэй аялсан     A mothering lullaby is sung
Сvvн цайлган сэтгэлээрээ     With a heart kind like milk

биедее таарсан махтай = meat that fits your body

The phrase mentioned in the title, биедее таарсан махтай, is one of the most common answers I get from nomads when I ask them what beauty is. My research in the last few months amongst Mongolian nomads has revealed to me a concept of beauty completely different than the one touted in the West and that even reigns in the capital city, Ulaanbaatar.
I am a Western woman, and as such, am not free from the body focused culture that Western women and men are raised in. Asking someone the question, “What is a beautiful woman?” almost always invokes ideas of physical attributes and rarely elicits purely internal qualitative comments. Even as a member of a subculture, I have a form of dress that I tend to find is more attractive than others, and am not completely free from judging based on these external attributes (as I am sure very few people raised in body-focused cultures are).

But nomads are raised in a veryveryvery different environment, relatively free from the constant medial presence (most Mongolian nomads have only received TV in the last 5 years) and cultural prescription of what it means to be ‘beautiful.’ So, I have been traveling around asking nomads and countryside Mongolians precisely what ‘beautiful’ means.

What I have found out is that the economic livelihood, subsistence forms and functionality are the keys to determining what a society or group of people think is beautiful. In a pamplet I was given by a professor in UB on traditional requirements for husbands and wives, I found the phrase ‘ууц нь тэнүүн махлаг’ (A woman’s body should be wide and fat) as a requirement for a beautiful Mongolian woman. Tell that to all the waif’s walking around downtown UB.

‘Wide and fat’ and ‘meat that fits your body’ are kinda typical answers I receive from nomads regarding beauty ideals. In fact, most nomads -man or woman- give me next to no comments on external body appearance when I ask them what it means for a woman to be beautiful. The most common answers are “good heart and mind,” “well-behaved,” “pleasant,” and “hard-working.” They like fat because, as I was told, it is ‘warm to cuddle with in the winter and offers shade in the summer.’ And almost every nomadic man tells me that a woman can be pot-ugly externally (really!), but as long as she is good inside, he would marry her and love her. So… why is this so different from the city?

Functionality, functionality, functionality. What good is a thin woman in the countryside of Mongolia? Every nomadic woman has to wake up at 6 in the morning to light the fire in the ger, go out and get the goats, and head with the flock to the well to lift up a 20 kilo bucket of water 30 times to feed all the goats. In the winter, she has to go outside in her deel (traditional dress) to milk all the livestock everyday in -40 degrees. And in the spring (the hardest season in Mongolia), she has to milk all the livestock and batten down the ger hatches, even in the hardest of sandstorms (which are very common during Mongolian springs). A thin woman can not heat her body long in -40 degree heat, can not lift up at least 30 buckets a day and thinner women have a lot harder time birthing kids (which are an asset and a great help when you have a LOT of physical work to do everyday of your life). Her makeup would stream down her face from all the work, and -as my first home-stay mother demonstrated to me- she would lose any jewelry or status object in the hustle of nomadic life.

In fact, the hardness of traditional Mongolian nomadic lifestyle deeply affects the beauty and gender ideals amongst Mongolian nomadic women. When asked what the role of a woman is in society, all countryside people first say ‘to have kids’ and then ‘to maintain the ger.’ From a Western perspective, this seems like the cliched answer that has historically limited women’s participation in society and kept them subdued in the gender hierarchy. However, in the context of Mongolian nomadicism, this answer seems like a completely logical one, which also is completely in line with their female body ideals.

Life out on the steppe is hard. Really hard. I have now lived with over 5 different nomadic families, milked goats in rain or shine or hail, chased baby camels up and down mountains, gathered dung several times a day, almost been run over by *really* pissed off wild horses, and lifted buckets of water over and over and over…. In this lifestyle, you need to work, and you need to do a lot of really hard bodily work. In contrast to the definition of work in ‘modernized’ societies, a definition largely mentally based (i.e., an executive can sit in front of a computer and lift barely a finger all day, but still be considered hard-working), the definition of work is very bodily focused. Thus, the description given by many people that a beautiful woman is ‘hard-working.’ Cause, man, if you don’t work, say goodbye to your flock and livelihood.

In the massive and constant workload, children are really important. Especially as nomads age, which they do very quickly (more quickly than most Western individuals who don’t have the constant weather stresses that nomads have), they needs kids and a large family to help them maintain their livelihood. So, the birth of a child is viewed as a very very important and significant event. It allows for a sharing of workload and eases the load on all individuals in the family. And thus it’s immense significance to Mongolian nomads and the description of a woman’s chief importance as a child-bearer.

Furthermore, the role divide in the traditional nomadic lifestyle is also a function that developed as a result of the hard work in nomadicism. Of course, this divide (man who does heavy lifting outside the home and a woman who is constantly cleaning the ger) is somewhat fluid, especially when life gets hectic (I have seen nomadic men do all sorts of cooking while the women have to chase camels for milking). However, women being largely in the ger to entertain, raise kids, milk, clean and cook, while the husbands grab horses, shear the livestock, and build gers has developed to lighten and simplify the workload on each of them. (*Note: this is no call for or justification of traditional gender divides, just an explanation of how these developed amongst Mongolian nomads and thus modern Mongolian culture and is linked to ecological circumstance.)

Thus, with this definition of work and gender role due to the lifestyle, it is no wonder that nomadic women and men are less image focused. To maintain your livelihood, success, and health, you need to work hard and have many kids, which allows you to make more milk products and have more livestock. Your success is almost completely equivalent to how much your body works. And thus, a woman’s internal abilities become much more important than external features: how much she can work, if she can have kids (which is easier with the natural fat storage women develop around the hips and waist), if she can get along with all the neighbors (so that people will help their family in hard times), and if she can be a good partner and mother are the key factors that assure a nomadic family’s success and thus are the true definition of ‘beautiful’ amongst Mongolian nomadic women.

But, unfortunately and fortunately for us, most of us live in capitalist, consumer-driven societies, that lay immense significance on meritocracy and individualism, thus teaching us that our beauty is a direct result of how much we consume and invest in it. Furthermore, gender roles also change, because day to day stresses no longer make this gender divide a necessity, and with the changed definition of work (the shift from body to mind), women become just as capable as men.

I still have another month of research amongst nomads (my next nomadic family is one of the richest in the area, which will be interesting since I have only been with poor or middle-class families thus far), but am really excited to go to the city and interview all the women that let themselves get plastic surgery (this is INCREDIBLY common in UB, more so than in any country I have lived in thus far) and make teenagers draw pictures of what they thick beautiful is (hehe). The contrast to the nomads will be incredible.