Must-Read: The World of the Mail-Order Brides

Mail-order bride

While it’s not usually the go-to place for investigative journalism, the folks over at AskMen.com have a pretty compelling piece today all about the business of Ukrainian Mail-Order Brides. In it, writer Jeremy Berger gets down and dirty with the business, heading over to the Ukraine himself and getting the scoop on how these mail-order businesses work.

Here’s a little excerpt:

It’s dicey. Not because the women aren’t real — they are — but because the first thing you find out when you get over there is that almost nobody ends up spending time with people they meet online. Women don’t pay to use the service; in fact, they get their photographs taken for free, and they’re given access to computers and translators for chat and email, so you can bet that part of the agreement is that they’re strongly encouraged, if not required, to email and chat as much as possible.

Email and chat are, in other words, mostly for rubes. I burned through 500 credits mostly responding to vague emails from a stunning brunette living in Kiev. I almost made plans to go see her, but only rookies, I would learn, skip the planned programming to meet women in other towns. There are simply way too many women at the three social events, or ?socials,? planned by Anastasia Date. The programming is elaborate in a surreal way. On my tour, the three socials included a successful attempt to break the Guinness Book of World Records mark for most kisses in one minute and a full-on beauty pageant complete with a bikini contest, in addition to the main attraction, which is several hundred women who came specifically to meet you.

Piece is long, too. So block off a small portion of your day to dwell in the mess of mail order brides. Well worth the read.