The difference between Polish and British women

I'll start with the issue that is simultaneously the easiest and the hardest to address: the often-repeated idea that Polish women are the most attractive in the world. I've heard this a hundred times from Poles and from non-Polish men living in Poland—non-Polish women living on Poland are a bit more sceptical. The easy answer to this assertion is: of course not — how could the coincidence of nationality make 20 million women more attractive than all of the 3.4 billion other women on the planet? It's a bit unlikely. It's also an especially difficult position to defend if you consider the question: most attractive to whom? Would the average Inuit or Zulu male really rate the average Polish female above the finest of his own culture?

There is a major problem with the idea of Polish female perfection that makes it indefensible: the assumption that Polish women are racially homogeneous and that a single racial type could be the best. Not only is this factually nonsense, given that there are Poles with Asian and African ancestry, it also goes against the proud and justified boast that Poland is historically a melting-pot of dozens of peoples and cultures. Trying to uphold the myth of unparalleled Polish female beauty quickly leads into the dark and unpleasant corners where racists live. On the other hand, and this is where it gets difficult, there is something about Polish women that many Western men find attractive. If it isn't just the way they look, and how could it be, then what is it?

The answers, I think, are disappointingly mundane. Polish women tend to be slimmer because, the current generation at least, did not grow up in a culture saturated with junk food. Fashion also makes a big difference. Polish women tend to dress in conservative and feminine styles. Men like this because it makes them look like respectable adults, and a lot of men secretly suspect they need a respectable adult to look after them.

In England, unless you are referring to a six-year-old niece or the actual daughter of a monarch, the phrase: "She's a princess" is never a positive description of a woman. It means she expects others, especially men, to treat her as if she was a special kind of human being. In Poland, if you tell a woman you think she is "sometimes a princess," she will be shocked that it's only "sometimes."

This is perhaps the fundamental difference between British and Polish women. Polish women are raised to believe that they are a special kind person, in the sense that they are more pure, refined and delicate than their brothers. This used to be true in England too and many Polish women are unable to understand why their sisters on the island would have given up these privileges. I’m not an expert on feminist theory, but I suspect the answer is that being expected to act like a princess all the time is quite boring and may be inconvenient if, say, you would prefer to build suspension bridges or become a Wall Street commodities broker.

Women worldwide express the opinion, at least sometimes, that men are idiots. As a representative of the idiots, I have to concede that it must be difficult to reconcile a lot of male behaviour with a claim to rational intelligence. In Poland the problem seems to be particularly acute. Many Polish women regard men as barely trained apes that have to be constantly guided away from mischief. The assumption seems to be that a man left to get on with his life without the benign influence of a wife or mother will, inevitably and swiftly, transform into one of those gentlemen of leisure commonly found snoring on park benches. The religious metaphor is inescapable: woman is a holy and pure creature whose role is to guide and save corrupt and weak man.

At first glance this is a situation that looks like it gives women a lot of power. In fact it does the opposite. Expecting yourself to be good and sensible all the time must be a huge burden for Polish women. Polish men, on the other hand, are expected to regularly fail these standards and, therefore, feel very little guilt when they do. It produces a population of women who see themselves as martyrs. They are expecting a life in which men let them down, and that's exactly what they get because those same men have been trained by their women to believe they are weak creatures who will inevitably let them down.

British women have a much easier time. The idea of the morally perfect woman died in Britain a long time ago. People who have learned about my country by watching popular film adaptations of two-hundred-year-old Jane Austen novels often get a serious shock when they meet real 21st-century English women. British women have given up the idea that they are inherently more moral or trustworthy than men. This makes them much less likely to hate themselves for their imperfections. It also makes them much more terrifying to men, because they are just as unpredictable and likely to do stupid things as we are.

Jamie Stokes