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