Kat’s Musings

Tag: Immigrant

  • How Pretty Woman Shaped My Understanding of Love

    How Pretty Woman Shaped My Understanding of Love

    I want to elaborate on this post. Pretty Woman was one of the first movies that I watched in America. I was four years old. I did not speak any English. But I understood it completely. 


    To me, it is not a story about a sex worker. This contrasts with the Oscar movie Anora, which I was told was a modern version of Pretty Woman. It is a story of a woman who needs saving. So I spent my entire life aspiring to be a damsel in distress.

    At four years old, I was not sure what I would need to be saved from. I knew that Vivienne also saved Edward. So, I aspired that I would need to be a savior to my own man. 

    Ultimately, this is how I have arranged my own life. I am strong enough for him but I need him to save me from..myself? And everything that have been through. Women are not supposed to be “I do not need a man” strong—and while I do not blame anyone or anything that has happened to me— I simply should have reacted differently.

    Therefore, I need some saving. I need my man to save me from overreacting and overthinking everything that happens.


    I guess that is what I admire about this character and this story. Vivienne did not simply demand a check or cash to cure her status in life. She needed a man who actually cared enough about her and gave her guidance to achieve a better life. She also showed him that there is more to life than the money and status that he was chasing. She helped him overcome his fear of heights etc. overall, this movie is a beautiful fairytale for girls of all ages. 


    After viewing this fairytale throughout the years, I now know what is happening in the dialogue and the story. While Vivienne is definitely sharp and witty, she is a character who I am proud to have embodied as an influence

  • Americana.

    Americana.

    I have lived in the tiny town of Snohomish, Washington,since I was seven years old. Snohomish is not flashy. It is not Seattle. It is the kind of place where you grow up slow. The biggest drama is who forgot to lock the barn. In Snohomish, “good morning” still means something.

    I used to hate that. I wanted to be a big city girl (ala Samantha Jones in Sex and the City). I even went away from the public school I was supposed to attend. I did this so I could dress and be a little more high class. 

    The girls who live in Snohomish pride themselves for living in a Bodunk town. “Fancy” usually means that you will sink into the muddy fields. It is not the norm.  But I did not like that. I did not want to wear pajamas and slippers to class. I wanted to wear stilettos and I dreamt of living in a penthouse. 

     None of that ended up happening. It became dangerous to even visit a city. Now I have a different perspective of this small town. It feels like living inside a postcard and that postcard smells like rain and fresh-cut grass most days. 

    This town is tiny, maybe ten thousand people. Main Street still looks like it did in the nineteen-twenties. It has brick storefronts, a hardware store that sells everything from nails to fudge, and diners. The river runs right through the middle—Snohomish River, wide and slow. Packed with sunburned locals in July. Around here, summers are for the county fair (something that I do not partake in). It is not the flashy kind with Ferris wheels taller than trees. It’s just a dusty field off Second Street, filled with goats baaa-ing, cotton candy, and sketchy ride operators. Winters are quieter. Fog rolls in off of Puget Sound like a blanket, and school buses crawl through it, headlights glowing. 

    People here do not rush. You wave at strangers because you have seen them before— since the town is so small. Everyone knows everyone’s business. They do not judge, or at least, they do not judge out loud. This was new to this little Russian girl. I left for college, came back since. The river still smells the same. The hardware store still sells fudge. And yes it rains, but it rains softly— as if this place is giving you a hug. 

    I want to share this hug with the love of my life. Convincing my boyfriend to move out to Washington state was like my experience of recognizing my hometown in the past. It is different from the postcard version I see now. 

    While we would not be living in Snohomish, small towns are so much more attractive than the big bad cities. While I do not want to dress like a slob or float down a river in the summer— I would rather that than be raped by an immigrant and encounter needles in the storefronts.  He would rather cheer for the teams that his family has always supported and not be surrounded by “aw shucks” coworkers. 

    So I do not belong in Snohomish, Washington, but I have definitely developed an appreciation for small towns. I might live in a small “Americana” town in Montana or the Carolinas. Wherever I end up, I will always waive “hello” and will not judge (out loud). 

  • Coming to America.

    Coming to America.

    Growing up Russian in the heart of America felt like living in two worlds at once—one where borscht simmered on the stove while the neighbor’s barbecue smoke drifted through the window. 

    My parents landed in a quiet Montana suburb in nineteen-ninety-four, after the Soviet collapse. They brought suitcases stuffed with pickled mushrooms, a samovar (Russian wood burning tea kettle) and a stubborn belief that silence was louder than shouting. My father delivered pizzas while my mother cleaned houses while watching English speaking soap operas to grasp the language. 

    School was the real culture shock. I showed up to first grade with a thick accent and a lunchbox full of black bread and salo—pig fat, basically. Kids stared. I had a terrible time making friends. None of my classmates were wearing the clothes that mother picked out for me. Instead of ironed on puppies and monkeys from stores like Gap and Old Navy, I was wearing thick Pippy Longstocking type tights underneath short overalls and turtleneck shirts. Hot. 

    Home was different. Dinner wasn’t tacos or pizza—it was pelmeni, cabbage rolls, or whatever my mother could stretch from a single chicken. We ate together—no phones, no TV. I could not be a kid who watched cartoons, I had to attend Russian school in order to learn Russian language, writing and enhance my culture by learning Pushkin poetry. I just wanted to be normal. Going to Russian school was not going to diminish my thick accent and my weird way of speaking— I needed to watch the cartoons and I wanted my parents to shop at popular places. 

    The holidays were wild. New Year’s Eve wasn’t about fireworks and resolutions—it was about Old New Year, January thirteenth, when we’d stay up until two in the morning eating Olivier salad and watching Soviet cartoons on VHS. We would toast to surviving another year, like it was a victory. 

    But America crept in. I learned to love American food (unfortunately), begged for Halloween costumes and even made a few friends. My parents hated it. Instead of drinking hot tea in the mornings, friends would ask for some soda alongside the hot pancakes my mother made. You’re turning American, my family grumbled, watching me eat cereal straight from the box. It hurt, but eventually I laughed—because yeah, I was. 

    Because now I am in love with an American and no one can convince me otherwise. This man actually sees me for me. My Russian and my American. I tell him about how I grew up and he amazes me with stories about life in an American family. Stories that I never even thought were possible. Yes, we are different but if this country is supposed to be a melting pot then we are it. Mixed together and forever making each other better. 

    So I guess some things stuck. I did not choose to be one culture or another. Because that is what growing up Russian in the middle of America teaches you: you don’t pick a side. You just mix everything together until it tastes like home.  And I found that home.