Picture it: The snow-blanketed slopes of the Sinaia mountains at the peak of the ski season teeming with happy families, couples and friends. A recent expat is standing near the chair lift, revelling in the joy and beauty of it all: the fresh, fluffy snow, the crystal-blue sky, the smiling faces, the impossibly low prices. He glances at a group of gorgeous Romanian girls, laughing as they pull a sled up the slopes. Their slender legs emerge from the knee-high snow and suddenly he sees it: all of their feet are shod in vertiginous stiletto boots. Welcome to Romania, the land of the Girly Girls!
There are places in the West where women can appreciate the seductive charms of personal grooming and overt femininity. In New York, a certain category of women (mostly professional, mostly wealthy, all educated) make an effort to maintain weekly manicures and blow-dries. An even smaller minority go the whole way – monthly highlights, regular waxings and facials, Botox injections after 30, face-lifts after 50.
Meanwhile, in LA, there are flip flops and Ugg boots, yet more money is spent on breast augmentation, tooth bleaching and hair extensions than anywhere else in the world. Still, LA has the world”s highest concentration of aspiring starlets and successful actresses and is, thus, poorly suited to the purposes of our inquiry. French women have traditionally been considered icons of style, yet theirs is a style of a far less over-groomed variety. I once heard a saying attributed to a French woman – “I would rather have a wrinkle on my face than on my stockings” – and I think it perfectly reflects the French approach to glamour.
And that is it. For an overwhelming majority of Western women, stilettos are akin to an overpriced torture implement and personal grooming that extends beyond regular tooth brushing and mascara is reserved for proms and wedding days. Most of them will live their entire lives having never had a facial. That is, of course, unless they never come to Romania. Romanian women are beautiful – this is a fact that has been acknowledged by every generation of travel writer and visitor to this country. However, they are also amongst the best-groomed women in the world. Bucharest teems with beauty salons and though some of them are nothing more than a couple of slightly dingy rooms hidden in apartment blocks, the women working in them are usually far more skilled than the specialists of the priciest salons in New York or London. A Romanian woman may skimp on new clothing or dinners out, but she will not miss her manicure.
Romanian women also understand the seductive power of a sky-high, needle-sharp heel. Bucharest has some of the worst sidewalks in Europe, and in the winter months when the cobblestones and potholes are covered by a layer of bumpy ice, the streets become deathtraps. And yet, come rain or shine, snow or sleet, Romanian women march on in their high heels, moving with gazelle-like grace even on the most treacherous terrain. As a grooming-obsessed New Yorker, coming to Romania was akin to landing in heaven. I can afford to indulge all of my girlie whims and have even discovered some heretofore unthought-of grooming rituals. When I went to law school in Washington, DC, my high heels and platform shoes raised many an eyebrow of my Birckenstock-and-khaki clad classmates, yet here I often find myself wearing the most sensible shoes in the room. Still, perhaps the most rewarding aspect of living in Bucharest is witnessing my fellow expats succumb to the stealthy charms of girliehood. Oh, they may still wear their sensible and comfortable shoes and their jeans may sit loosely way above their hips, but their nails suddenly acquire a glossy layer of polish and their skin a post-facial sheen.
I do not know if upon returning to our respective homelands we will maintain our new habits. After all, the prices will be prohibitively high and the good specialists difficult to find. Perhaps without the motivation of being surrounded by unattainable beauty, we will likely succumb to our slothful, unkempt ways. But for now, let”s schedule that manicure-waxing-facial-massage, let”s put on the most impossibly high heels and let”s celebrate living in a country where women are still allowed to be girly girls!