The First Beauty Pageant

Irina Popova

The First Beauty Pageant

“My name is Natasha. I was born in 1969, in the USSR, in one

of those big faceless industrial cities no one heard of. I was

nineteen years old when I found out about this model agency.

It was one of the kind in our town. And we are talking about

the late eighties, the period of the Perestroika. I come from a

really nice family, with great parents. The problem was that

I never felt like a woman: I was tall, really skinny and looked

boyish. I was bullied at school.

From the very beginning I had no respect for my own body. I

had a feeling that myself and my body exist separately.

I lost my virginity unwittingly, when I was seventeen

years old. We went out with friends when some strangers

invited us over to their place. We had some drinks, it was

fun. Soon after, my friends left and I decided to stay. I was

raped by three of them. I cannot say that it was a traumatic

experience; I just began to dislike myself even more.

I knew that the model agency was just a rap parlour.

It was organised by a well-known local journalist. He used

to invite girls straight to his office. Once there, girls were

photographed, supposedly for a beauty pageant. In reality,

many of those pictures were used to make a catalogue of

prostitutes. The editorial office I’m talking about was the

major newspaper in the region. A region the size of the

Netherlands. And the Soviet Union was still standing. This

editorial office was yet another bureaucratic organisation,

just as the Communist party. Virtually it was a propaganda

organ for the party.

I want you to understand in what kind of world we were

living then. It was a space deprived of beauty. There were

concrete walls, dusty roads and red letters “Communist

Party of Soviet Union� on roofs of the buildings and on

posters. There were no nice things, nothing for pleasure,

the word “individuality� was a curse-word. But there were

already movie tapes for rent, with Hollywood fairy-tales, and

that’s where we got our knowledge that a different life exists.

And we wanted to get that different life as soon as possible.

The Iron Curtain hadn’t collapsed yet, but deep inside

people knew that it was soon to happen. It was time for

private business and mafia to emerge. Female escorts were

in demand as never before. Soviet girls used to believe that

prostitution was a synonym for “freedom�, a fancy and

dangerous profession. It was thought that prostitutes earn

a lot of money and then get married to rich men. That is

why many girls wanted to work as prostitutes. Our agency

attracted mainly students from remote regions. But there

were also girls like me, cultivated, from good families. It was

a clever system. First the models were attracted by an ad in

the biggest newspaper of the region to send their photos for a

beauty contest. The prettiest of them were carefully selected

to come to the office for making a professional portfolio by

the staff photographer. Then they were asked to participate

in the “model agency”. Nothing seemed wrong – the authority

of the main newspaper was very firm. The girls were

participating in model shows in Soviet Houses of Culture,

walked in the ring during the breaks at boxing matches. But

it was all part of promoting them for the customers. Then

the “models” were asked for “private assignments”. They still

could resist, but the offered sums were too attractive.

That’s how innocent provincial girls who dreamed to be

beauty queens slid into prostitution en masse.

I don’t know what encouraged them; for me it was the need

of male attention. I worked as a prostitute for more than a

year. I got to know many bandits intimately, who afterwards

became street legends. None of them are alive now. I also lost

a girlfriend to a pervert, who killed her and hid her in his

backyard. And I found myself at death’s door two times, but

was saved by miracle.

Once a client asked me out. He lived in the outskirts of the

city. He offered me some wine, but I only touched the glass

with my lips. This saved me eventually. I think he had added

a strong tranquilliser into the wine. After a while he started

yelling: “Why don’t you fall asleep? I can’t have sex with a

fully conscious woman!� Then he pointed his gun at me. I

don’t remember how I talked him out of this desire to kill me.

I only remember that I hardly could hold myself together not

to laugh. This situation and my whole life seemed very stupid

to me. And I was not scared of death – that’s why I probably

managed to escape it.

At some point, I felt it was time to leave the business. But

they didn’t want me to; I was a refined, smart girl and the

clients loved me. They used to say: “She knows how to

behave�. Nevertheless, I held my ground. And my misgivings

were well-founded — some months later police discovered

the brothel. There was a huge scandal, and it was all over

the news. The founder of all this bribed the police and easily

avoided prosecution. And there wasn’t any evidence left

anyway — all the photographs were gone without a trace.”

Twenty years later, the photographs were found during

reconstruction works in the same old editorial office. There

was an inscription on the package: “Record of the first beauty

pageant�. Natasha, the girl who told us this story, recognised

almost none of the girls in the pictures. This means that

there were many girls working for this “model agency�,

maybe over three hundred.

Later the journalist behind all this was promoted to a

high-rank position. He especially liked to hire young girls

as interns, and there was a legendary sofa in his office —

everybody knew what was happening there. Once he was

fired, his successor burned the sofa down behind the office

building.

Natasha never got married.

The fate of the rest of the girls remains unknown.

THE FIRST BEAUTY PAGEANT, photo book

Irina Popova

CONCEPT AND EDIT GRAPHIC DESIGN

Dostoevsky Graphics

TEXT

Zoya Glazacheva

SPECIAL THANKS TO

Zoya Glazacheva Ronit Porat my dear parents Liubov & Alexey Popov and this generous person, who kindly offered this private archive for artistic interpretation and who preferred to remain unnamed.

Copy ______ / _______

www.irinapopova.net

Amsterdam, 2017