Internet Spurs Growth of Mail Order Brides

By Kye Leung
2000

While seeking some information on the internet about Filipina/American marriages, I came across a slew of sites advertising for mail-order brides. Type in the word "Filipina" on Yahoo! search and there's Filipina 4 Love, "a penpal service introducing marriage minded Filipino women to men worldwide." There's Filipina Bride, "featuring women from Manila and Cebu" or Filipina Ladies, "introduction service for men looking for relationships, dating, and marriage." Go to altavista.com and the search engine will respond with similar results.

The idea of mail-order brides has been around for a while. In the past, lonely men who went on to settle in new areas would write back to their homeland for a bride. Early Japanese immigrant men exchanged letters and photos with prospective brides. The marriage would be arranged by the families and legalized in Japan and the bride would then journey to the U.S. However, today's mail-order brides face different challenges then the brides of before. Brides from Asian countries still face the disadvantages of coming from far away and coming to a new country and culture, but today's grooms are usually White Caucasians from the U.S., Australia, Canada and countries from Europe.

A web site cockatoo.com said this about mail-order brides in the Philippines. "The local media loves to create the impression that Filipinas in arranged marriages generally end up in slavery, prostitution or the morgue.. In spite of much negative publicity there are still a large number of Philippine girls and women who would like a chance to get out of their economic misery by marrying a foreigner."

The web site then goes on to say that the Record Newsweekly reported on Aug. 21, 1982, "Thousands of Filipin(a) women had traveled to Germany as mail-order brides, in most cases to marry much older men. A big number of them ended up in brothels, their German husbands serving as their pimps. A newly arrived Filipin(a) bride was shared by her husband with a number of his friends. They had contributed, he said, to her travel expenses in coming to Germany from the Philippines. A Filipin(a) mail-order bride was murdered by her Australian husband of a few months, then quickly cremated, after he had taken out an insurance policy on her life."

In the anthology Making Waves, Venny Villapando wrote an article "The Business of Selling Mail Order Brides." In the article she qoutes the Japanese American Citizens League, "The marketing techniques used by catalogue bride companies reinforce negative sexual and racial stereotypes of Asian women in the U.S." Professor Bok-Lim Kim noted, "that negative reactions and attitudes toward foreign Asian wives ‘exacerbates marital problems,' which result in incidences of spouse abuse, desertion, separation, and divorce."

The internet now makes subscribing to a mail-order bride service easier than ever. At chinabride.com, one can purchase for $5 an address or $2 if you buy in bulks of 75 or more. On their site, it gives reasons why one should choose an Asian woman. Below are excerpts of what they wrote on their site:

"Women from Asia are feminine. They typically have smooth, silky, hairless skin. Women from Asia are gentle. These women do not scold you, and call you a male chauvinist when you hold open a door for them. Women from Asia appreciate the way western men treat their women. Western men, especially American men have very good reputations. We are world famous for treating women with respect and consideration. Women from Asia value marriage. They do not believe in divorce. They marry for life. They believe in finding the right man and sticking by him, in good times and bad. Husband and children never take second place to her career. Women from Asia value maturity. If you are older than your woman, that's not a problem, it's a plus. Asian women respect maturity. It signifies wisdom, stability, experience and gentleness."

Women become mail-order brides because of their economic situation at home. Countries with high unemployment and internal turmoil are more likely to have women who become mail-order brides compared to a country that is more economically more stable and has a higher standard of living such as Japan. "Many of the countries affected by the revived mail-order business have a history of U.S. military involvement... During their stays, the soldiers have often developed strong perceptions of Asian women as prostitutes, bargirls, and geishas, " wrote Villapando.

Like the early Japanese picture brides who came to the U.S., today's brides are shocked to find that their prospective husbands are different then what they had been told. Asian brides are at a disadvantage because they don't have much information about the husbands. When they arrive in the U.S. these Asian women face cultural, linguistic and economic barriers. A study done at the University of Texas in 1983 on 265 subscribers of mail-order bride catalogues concluded that "very many of them had extremely bitter experiences with divorce or breakups or engagements." Sixty-five percent of these men have incomes of over $20,000, the average age was thirty-seven, height five feet seven inches, and most were college educated. The Japanese American Citizens League also found the same general profiles of men who seek mail-order brides. They tended to be White, older than the women they marry, politically conservative and socially alienated.

"The mail-order bride system will prevail as long as there are consumers and profit, and as long as underdeveloped countries continue failing to meet the economic, political, and social needs of their people... Only a strong womens' movement, one tied to the exploited underdeveloped country's struggle for liberation and independence can challenge these ideas."

"Women from Asia are feminine. They typically have smooth, silky, hairless skin. Women from Asia are gentle."

Quote from a website advertising mail order services.