Recently, a friend of mine recommended an article in the UK”s Independent. The article he suggested was charming enough, but what really caught my eye was a cover story with a provocative title “Why Men Are Crap”. The story itself, offered in response to recent notoriously sexist comments from such high-profile men as the chef Gordon Ramsay and Harvard University president Larry Summers, was little more than a fluff piece: sound bites from various high-powered and/or famous women providing their opinions on men”s weaknesses. It did, however, get me thinking. After all “men are such crap!” is a refrain heard all too often from expat women in Bucharest. Get at least two foreign women together and the conversation will turn to the many ways in which our fellow expat men are lacking.
Well, gentlemen, I admit: I too am guilty. I have had too many a conversation in which I lamented the lack of datable men in our little community, decried their spoiled, inconsiderate ways, and, on more than one occasion, expressed serious doubt as to their general sanity. But today I am turning a new leaf and coming to the defense of my male friends, colleagues and, yes! even ex-boyfriends. To start with, however, let us be clear: I am not coming to the defense of all men. After all, who am I to put in doubt the multi-million dollar industry of books telling us all of the ways in which men are different and all of the various forms of annoyance and pain these differences can cause us? And that”s just it: expat men are, simply put, men – and as such are no better, but not really much worse than their non-traveling counterparts. Let us examine some of the charges levied against foreign men in Romania. We complain that they date women younger and thinner than us. But come, ladies, men do this the world over. If I had a penny for every time a man with money and power dated or married a slightly overweight older woman I would have very few pennies indeed. It is simply that the dynamics of money of power are slightly different in Romania, where a Westerner on an expat salary is practically a mogul. Sure, we cannot expect to compete with long-legged twenty-something beauties, but nor should we. Just like everywhere else in the world, successful older women have much to offer (just ask Ashton Kutcher) and there are plenty of men even amongst the expats who are able to appreciate that. As an American, I have also lamented the lack of a culture of dating in Bucharest. The social dynamic is far more reminiscent of a university campus: we meet at drunken parties and engage in childish snog-fests, often with our friends. Sometimes these late-night couplings lead to actual relationships, but more frequently they remain as slightly foggy memories.
After all, “adult” dating is mostly a drag: awkward first dates, with complicated politics of who-gets-the-check and do-I-kiss-him-goodnight, they make me long for the carefree student days when things just happened and we worried about little beyond immediate gratification. Living in Bucharest we get to recapture our youth, which can be both a blessing and a curse. After all, our college boyfriends were far less likely to commit and be serious about relationships, but then this the price we pay for having a second go at youth.
In many ways we are actually luckier than the women in our home countries. We are surrounded by an abundant garden variety of manhood – Romanian, British, Italian, French, American, Dutch, Irish, German, Swedish – living here I sometimes feel like an anthropologist of dating, given a unique opportunity to experience the varied charms, quirks and downright peculiarities of the world”s men.
Sure, sometimes all I long for is good, old-fashioned commitment, human companionship and, of course, true love. At those moments I shower my dog with just a little too much affection and call my girlfriends. We get dressed, meet at a bar and over one too many cocktails complain about men and lament the impossibility of finding a fulfilling and meaningful relationship. And this, come to think of it, is no different from what women do from New York to London and from Moscow to Wichita. Women and men might well come from different planets and that is certainly old news. On the tiny space ship of Bucharest our differences may be more apparent, but at least when our hearts get broken we do not have to resort to healing them with dehydrated ice cream.
Lola Gusman is an U.S. attorney working for the Marco Group in Bucharest. She has lived in Romania for three years.