I hear from many people that Poles don’t like each other. We cringe seeing other people of our nation speaking Polish at airports, especially if they go to the same holiday destination (please don’t ask me why, but it is a thing). We get suspicious about Polish colleagues in overseas workplaces.
I am not saying I do; it is just hearsay.
I don’t feel strongly about the necessity to build your diaspora community in the country where you choose to immigrate to. I think it is a personal preference who you want to surround yourself with.
I would not want to limit myself to just seeing other Polish people, but definitely, when I interact with another Eastern European woman, we have some form of understanding that I would not have with a person from any other part of the world.
Especially if the woman is an immigrant who chose to move abroad on her own account, not with her parents.
I think we all bring part of our history with us, some expectations that we bear, some form of a stereotype that we want to break, and some silent strength that we treat as a default state. If we ‘made it’ in the UK, in the most superficial and socially acceptable way (well, by having a career or prosperous business), I think there is some special appreciation of the success, even if that is not exactly how it should be measured.
The thing about me is that I believed for a long time that I had never cared much about the stereotypes and expectations that were put upon me as a Polish woman. Unfortunately, it was mainly because I was lucky enough not to be reminded about them that often in my youth and not exactly because of my resilience. Since I was academically successful from the age of 7 to around 24, I was only getting encouragement to achieve as much as possible in those two decades of life. I felt no special gender expectations as women in Poland, in general, are required to be strong, independent, and driven (though it is more nuanced than how it sounds), at least until a certain age when their life goals are expected to shift more towards family and motherhood.
You can do that, or you can emigrate. I did the latter at the age of 26.
Now, a few years later, when I finally learned to treat the UK more like home, when my ties with Poland weakened drastically compared to how it felt three years ago, I wonder what my identity means to me anymore as a Polish citizen and an Eastern European woman.
I have a Polish accent that people love commenting on. I hardly drink alcohol, which people like commenting on too. I can make great pierogi, and I know a lot of trivia about John Paul II. I love The Witcher saga, so I definitely fit some stereotypes. Plus, I am kind of blonde, currently, skinny and blue-eyed, so I quite fit the look too.
Something that I find ‘funny’ about the stereotype surrounding Polish people is that they are considered both hard-working and incompetent. Yes, they put in a lot of work, but cognitively, they are not doing that great. I am saying this for no particular reason, just to call out anyone who thinks that and tell them off.
I would also love to do the same for any men who fetishize Polish/Eastern European women, though I understand that everyone has a type. But if you date solely Polish women and tell me that as some kind of a brag, I must admit it won’t be received kindly. It is just weird.
Another thing that people (and me actually, too, as a history nerd) love to bring up is the complicated history of my country. Personally, I treat any events that happened before my birth without any emotions and only as learnings that should be analysed. For that reason, I do not appreciate comments about me possibly having a private grudge against any nation. I do not have that, even these days, as I am able to detach governments’ decisions from individuals. Of course, there are extreme cases of a certain type of nationalists, but I wouldn’t probably be friends with them regardless of if Poland has ever been invaded by their country (though that doesn’t leave out many countries, to be honest).
One thing that I don’t believe many are aware of is some special sensitivity that Polish people have, some romanticism that we bear that differs from saudade of the Portuguese but probably could be compared to. We, pesky millennials, like to joke about this petty weakness; however, I think we all have a little bit of nostalgia regarding certain symbols of our history and culture that we were raised to celebrate. I am talking about the period when Poland was almost an empire, about Slavic cult symbols, about the poems and novels of our Romanticism era. Yes, we do make fun of those, and all of these tropes of culture can be used for extremist purposes, but I can’t help but feel something about them. Not sure what it is, but since this unnamed feeling lingers after having been surrounded by various cultural treasures for ages, I can’t completely disregard that.
A few last words about being a Polish woman. At the time when abortion was banned, and women rose to protest, my heart was breaking for everyone who felt hopeless and scared.
The efforts to make female bodies simultaneously sacred and controlled dehumanize us and make us lesser compared to the purpose we are supposed to serve.
I had many thoughts about returning to Poland in the past, but I will not do that until the abortion law has been changed.
On a slightly lighter note, being a Polish woman definitely comes with many expectations. I already mentioned being a strong and resilient foundation of a family – that is all true, but also, we are expected to be very feminine, good looking, preferably slim, well dressed, and excellent housewives. You shouldn’t also be a prude, but at the same time, you cannot see too many men (please don’t ask me how many are too many). I wish I could tell you that I never cared about being/not being all these things, but it would be a huge lie – they are almost all objectively good things, aren’t they? Also, a Polish woman has to be a mother, and not having the desire to have children is still very much frowned upon.
I won’t comment, for my personal safety, about which of these stereotypes I meet and which I feel burdened by. I am sure that a lot of other women feel pressured to be certain things just because of where they happened to be born, and I hope that I will be able to support at least some of them in those struggles.
