SHARAPOVA. Kuznetsova. Dementieva. Just three out of a clutch of six in the final 16 in the women’s singles. Wimbledon resounds with hardhitting East European talent. They’re determined and aggressive, heiresses to Martina Navratilova and with looks to kill for.
Slav babes are not confined to the grass courts, though. Serving you at the restaurant, au pairing, training your husband at the gym — these high -cheekboned, long-legged perfect tens are over here and bent on making it.
Many are Russians limited to a tourist visa, but most are from “new member” EU states — Latvia, Poland, the Czech Republic. Taxes are higher than back home, but even menial jobs pay better than whatever is on offer in Riga or Cracow. This, plus the fact that most of them are single and childfree, ensure that they are an eager, unfussy and appealing workforce.
The French are in hysterics about the “Polish plumber” who may steal their blue-collar jobs, but British women are more worried about the “Slav babe”, out to steal their white-collar men. While across the Channel they worry about losing their competitive edge to low-paid, equally skilled men, over here we are wary of the new intake of low-paid and better-packaged women. Forget the babushka of yesteryear with her fleshy tyres and steel teeth; today’s East European women are better-kempt, thinner, better groomed, more appreciative, less demanding, than their Western counterparts. More important — these women are utterly ruthless.
They have watched their mothers being subjected to an all-controlling State that dictated a woman’s right to breed and worship; her choice of work, home and, to some extent, partner; and of course her wages.
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The memory of strictures and communal curbs, not to mention unreliable Lada cars and scarce, grotty food (such as kvas, a soft drink made from fermented breadcrumbs), convinces young Slav women that although for Mama the Iron Curtain lifted too late, they can get out (and over here) and grab the better job, the richer man, the safer passport. When you have shared kitchen and bathroom with another family, and lived in fear of the secret police, you have little patience for moral scruples and social niceties. Loyalty to the sisterhood and self-effacing good manners go by the board.
Game, set — and match.