Trigger warnings: suicide, abuse, sexual exploitation, human trafficking, eating disorders

I opened TikTok (as I, regrettably, too often do) with the intention of finding a lip balm I wanted to buy. The first video I saw was of a skinny girl in a ribbed, tight-fitting black top a-la 90s minimalism, making breakfast - a single fried egg, diced tomatoes, avocado of course, and something I can only describe as runny white sauce - to the tune of a slowed and reverbed Russian trap song. The caption - “Slavic Doll Diet”... Slavic doll diet? What’s that about? On impulse I checked the girl’s bio to see where my fellow Slavic sister is from. She’s American. I searched “Slavic Doll” to see a few more videos, for research purposes I justified to myself, which turned into hours and hours of falling further and further down the “Slavic Doll” rabbit hole. The lip balm became a distant memory. In its place arose a question - since when is it fashionable to be Slavic?

The more I was thinking about this the more frustrated I got, which to be honest initially confused me. Growing up in a small Balkan country I was ecstatic every time something remotely related to Bulgaria was mentioned. I still do. But as I have gotten older that naive gratitude for being merely acknowledged has worn off. Now I am much more critical of the way my ethnicity is represented in the media. The first victim of my criticism was the “Slavic Bimbo” last winter. You know, the girl wearing a micro mini skirt and stiletto heels despite living in one of the coldest regions of the planet. Not to worry, her floor-length fur coat and a fluffy hat will keep her toasty. How are they going to keep her from slipping and cracking her head on the frozen pavement I can’t tell you. Now, I don’t think I need to explain why labeling an entire ethnic group as “bimbo” is problematic, but this does not exhaust all the problems with this aesthetic. This image of an overtly glamorous woman decked out in furs and jewels is the stereotype of Slavic women in popular culture. And as someone born and raised in Eastern Europe I have never seen this woman. But her image is a familiar one. It appears in the periphery of my mind when thinking about Northern Slavic women. So where does it come from? This trend emulates the stereotypical look of Russian oligarch wives. Beautiful. Obedient. Sexy yet naive. Homely in a glamorous way. A perfect jewel wrapped in fur, ready to be admired and envied. A mythological figure born by the imagination of a troubled nation seeking stability in traditional gender roles has somehow turned into the calling card for an entire region. This standard is still prevalent in post-Soviet countries, especially in the North, and girls are raised to conform to it. Turning it into a trend not only propagates these outdated values, but also makes light of the rigid upbringing of most Slavic girls. The “Slavic Doll” does the same, but is somehow worse.

Image Courtesy of British Vogue

Instead of emulating oligarch wives this aesthetic’s icons are Eastern European models from the 2000s like Vlada Roslyakova, Tanya Dziahileva, and my personal favourite Natalia Vodianova. Their delicate features, porcelain skin, striking blue eyes, blonde locks, and tall lean figures were unlike anything the fashion industry had seen before and earned them the label the “Slavic Dolls”. These girls were captivating not only for their cold fragile beauty, but also for their rags to riches stories: Roslyakova, a girl born into a poor family from Siberia, became a regular on the catwalks of Paris, New York and Milan; Vodianova went from selling fruits on the roads of her small Russian town to walking for the biggest designers in the world and eventually married into aristocracy. How can a girl not be inspired? But how is that reflected in the aesthetic? Usually aesthetics have signature pieces like bows for the coquettes or fur coats for the “Slavic Bimbo”, but the “Slavic Doll” lacks such iconography. Truth is that, in terms of visuals, the only thing unifying these women are their looks and skinny bodies. The former are their ethnic features. The lather - the harmful beauty standards enforced by the modeling industry at the time. So the “Slavic Doll” aesthetic is not about fashion, but about fitting into a very restricted mode of beauty. There is nothing wrong with being inspired by these strong, hard-working girls, but the current revival of the “Slavic Dolls” is about glamorising and romanticising their stories, simultaneously glossing over their struggles and perpetrating the same unhealthy and harmful standards they were subjected to.

Much has been written about the toxicity of the modeling industry in the 90s and early 2000s: cutthroat competitiveness, eating disorders, constant scrutiny, and harsh working conditions were considered a normal part of the modeling profession. This was even harsher for the Slavic models as being alone in a foreign country made them even more vulnerable. An example of this is the forced rivalry between the “Slavic Dolls” and the so-called “Brazilian Bombshells”. The two groups of foreign models were constantly compared and put against each other in the media, which resulted in rumoured rivalries between the two groups. Criticism was mostly directed at the Slavic models for being cold, bitchy and stuck up, an example being the rumors about Natalia Vodianova pushing another model so she would be closer to Karl Lagerfeld, which was highly exaggerated. Vodianova herself has often been the victim of jealousy, once narrowly escaping a knife attack by fifteen of her friends in her hometown. The most tragic case from the “Slavic Doll” era however is the mysterious death of Ruslana Korshunova. The so-called “Russian Rapunzel” was found dead near her apartment in New York, a week shy of her twenty-first birthday. The police concluded that her death was an “apparent suicide”, but the testimonies of her close friends and circumstances surrounding the case leave Korshunova’s death a mystery. The Slavic models of the early 2000s faced great hardship working in an exploitative and harsh industry. They dealt with discrimination, violence, and scrutiny from the press. The saddest thing is that the “Slavic Dolls” were the lucky ones.

Images: “Slavs of Fashion” Courtesy of Vanity Fair and “Ruslana Korshunova” Courtesy of The Telegraph

My biggest problem with the “Slavic Doll” aesthetic is that it glamorises the relationship between Slavic women and the modeling industry during the early years of the post-Soviet era. This period was marked by poverty, corruption, and organised crime, which made living in Eastern Europe, especially as a young pretty girl, extremely hard and dangerous. Roslyakova, Dziahileva, Vodianova, and Korshunova all grew up in this environment. Modeling was their ticket out of hell. Thousands of Eastern European girls, who were just as beautiful and just as desperate to escape looked up to them and dreamed of becoming models. Crime organisations took advantage of this. In the 90s and early 2000s modeling agencies in the former Eastern Bloc were created as covers for one of the biggest human trafficking channels in the world. Thousands of women from post-Soviet countries were trafficked as prostitutes to Western countries, exploited and abused. One of the worst cases was in my home country Bulgaria, which to this day is one of the leading countries of origin for victims of human trafficking. I was raised with horror stories about these modeling agencies. To this day modeling agencies, beauty pageants, and even hospitality jobs are often tied to prostitution and sexual exploitation. Overlooking these tragedies and reducing the complex history of Slavic women in the modeling industry to just the beauty of the models is extremely problematic and ignorant, especially in the current political context. When thinking about this era of modeling it’s important to acknowledge its problems rather than trying to emulate and glamorise them.

As critical as I am in regards to recent Slavic-inspired aesthetics I have to admit that there is a silver lining to them. While they are based on stereotypes and problematic ideas, they bring Slavic and Eastern European identities to the broader cultural conversation. A similar thing happened in the 2010s with the rise of k-pop, when a surface-level appreciation of Korean music, style and beauty evolved into a conversation about the exploitative practices in the k-pop industry and an increased interest in Asian culture. It is sad that a minority has to be stereotyped to become relevant, but as long as it results into something positive I for one do not mind. It is high time Eastern European voices receive more attention and if that is going to happen through a ten second Tik Tok of Roslyakova’s walk for Tom Ford then so be it. But going forward we should take inspiration from authenticity rather than from stereotypes. To end this solemn article on a more positive note I am going to give you a short list of some of my Eastern European style inspirations:

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