Today, you can buy everything in the shopping centre. Love, too. Young and attractive girls from middle school have their feelings for sale. This is a new era of shopping. Consumer society has created demand for Galerianki.
Galerianki are a relatively new phenomenon in Poland, one that is being discussed increasingly openly. This is partly due to Katarzyn Rosłaniec’s film of the same title. Galerianki are teenage girls whose ambition is to consume as many material goods as possible. In shopping centres and on the Internet, they pick up much older and wealthy men who sponsor their dream shopping in exchange for sexual services.
In Rosłaniec’s film, a shy and completely unfashionable middle-school girl becomes fascinated by a classmate. Milena is a self-confident leader dressed in the trendiest clothes, and she introduces the girl to a world where everything is for sale. She teaches her how to earn money by selling herself.
Galerianki cannot be called modern prostitutes. This is neither their profession nor their means of support. Galerianki are not outside society. They have met its consumer needs. They ask what they should be like, and society convinces them that it is best for them to become luxury goods. Where there is demand, supply appears. These are the pure rules of the market. Galerianki are a product of consumer society.
From the web to real life. Order a Galerianka online
Michał, a lecturer at the Faculty of Cultural Studies of the University of Warsaw, conducted his own experiment. He logged on to Fotka.pl to get to know the community that gathered there.
The Fotka.pl portal was created so that its users could put themselves up for a kind of auction. Only the image they create and physical attractiveness matter. Users’ photographs are rated on a scale from 1 to 10, various kinds of virtual gifts are sent to the highest-rated person, and users post comments about one another. There are also lists and rankings of the most popular—in other words, visually most attractive—people.
Users display bare torsos, plunging necklines and miniskirts. Very little is covered in the photographs. A physically attractive body is meant to arouse, because this image sells best. Comments on the photographs always have an erotic context; sometimes they are vulgar, sometimes amusing:
“Come tooO my placee at .. at .. at .. eight Ó’clock . (( :, We’ll leaarnn to haave... haave... haave... Uu roadOway uCation . ; ))”
Young girls—often fifteen or sixteen—frequently stipulate that the man they want to meet must be much older, for example over thirty. Peers are blocked and considered immature.
“There is a very specific ritual for meeting and picking up new people on the portal,” Czaja comments. “To leave the web and meet the chosen girl in real life, one must follow a particular pattern.
First, you have to rate the chosen girl as highly as possible and post a public, positive comment about her. Ideally, it should mention her attractiveness and passionate feelings. These actions give you the opportunity to have a private conversation online. This is also when personal, intimate photographs are often exchanged. Then the compliments return, but in private. It is a good idea to emphasise her physical attractiveness as much as possible. The penultimate step is getting her GG or Skype number.
Czaja stresses that at this stage of personal and direct contact, the girls stop being vulgar and transform from sex demons into pleasant, friendly and quite innocent fifteen-year-olds who have problems at school. They do not know how to deal with their classmates’ jibes or how to talk to their parents. These are the problems they share with the newly met person. They also distance themselves from their sexualised image on Fotka.pl.
The final step is meeting in real life. Most often, this means an invitation to a party. Sexual contact may occur then and may be considered part of the conventions of the meeting. It is also time to clearly establish the rules of sponsorship. When earlier proposals such as “top up my mobile account in exchange for my nude photographs” appear, more expensive demands may follow.
Czaja does not believe that these girls decide to have sex with the newly met man every time, despite boasting on the portal about the number of partners they have slept with in a week.
One can conclude from this that, in the safe space of the Internet, these teenagers play at an erotic adult world. Just as little girls put on their mothers’ dresses and shoes and ask to have their lips painted with lipstick, their older sisters engage in virtual sex online and reproduce the adult women’s world seen in advertisements and Cosmo.
The only thing these girls do not imitate is their real mothers. They imitate their dreams of the ideal woman in a consumer society. The parents of Galerianki are neither role models nor authorities for them. In Rosłaniec’s film, the girl fascinated by a shopping-centre regular tells her parents that her friend—the one who offers a man oral sex for a new pair of jeans—is the one who knows how to manage in life. She is her heroine.
A new wave of feminism, or dependence on men?
Michał, who studies the behaviour of teenage girls on Fotka.pl, believes they are new feminists. Young women confident in themselves, their assets and their attractiveness pick up men on their own. They do not passively wait with their eyes lowered to be noticed. They comment on, block or facilitate access to their accounts. They provoke. Czaja believes they have taken up language previously reserved exclusively for men. Now they are the ones saying: “Nice ass,” “I want to fuck you,” “You’re a real hottie.”
It looks like the dream of feminists has come true. An active young generation of women taking matters into their own hands. Aware of their sexuality and able to become hunters. But there is a catch.
Galerianki need men. Financially, they depend on them. That is why they look for older and wealthy partners. Michał also puts forward the theory that all these efforts to be the coolest girl and have the coolest clothes serve one purpose. The most important thing is to have a man. All this glamour is meant to lead to one thing: achieving happiness in love. Except that love in a consumer society is based on buying and selling. And so these independent Lolita-feminists turn into dependent little women desperately needing a man who is their only available source of support.
What does Czarny Lotos envy Galerianki?
One of the users of the www.istotneinformacje.pl portal created a remarkably interesting persona under the nickname Czarny Lotos. The fictional character, Czarny Lotos, transforms from a teacher at one of the schools in Bolesławiec County into a businesswoman and luxury “Galerianka” managing a hotel at a Swiss resort.
Czarny Lotos professes the same views as the girls discussed above. The most important thing is a wealthy lover, who should be worshipped and respected. In return, he gives expensive gifts. Then a woman’s life will become paradise.
It is interesting that, under another nickname used previously, this user ran a kind of school for wives. He encouraged young girls not to sell their young bodies to any penniless youngsters, but to look for a lifelong partner among affluent older men.
It is significant that Czarny Lotos was born from a teacher who transformed into a Galerianka. A person regarded today as an intellectual and a failure, with almost no professional authority, desperately wants to become someone who wins at life. What does Czarny Lotos envy Galerianki?
Galerianki have everything that advertisements say a happy woman should have: youth, beauty, the trendiest clothes, accessories and gadgets, and a wealthy man—a sponsor. With no responsibilities or burdensome job, and depending on how many sponsors they find, they can shop without making sacrifices—the goal of consumer life. Galerianki know how to position themselves in a new reality in which material status determines social standing and advancement. A good car, designer clothing and perfumes from Sephora all clearly signal that one has succeeded in life.
When informing others about our achievements in life, we primarily showcase material possessions.
The following information would not arouse the average citizen’s envy:
– My son became a Buddhist monk and meditates in the cold, in a stone hut, wearing only one shirt, to achieve a higher spiritual level.
But another description would sow envy in every parent’s heart:
– My son works for a large company in the capital in a managerial position and drives foreign cars. He has just returned from Sri Lanka, where he vacationed in the boss’s private plane.
In practice, Galerianki fulfil a dogma passed down in Polish homes for years: one may study, but an intellectual is a failure in life without a penny to their name. Neither spiritual development nor intellectual work is respected. They are valued poorly. It is worth having a diploma and social polish, but above all one must learn how to get around things. Galerianki have elevated this ability to an art form. People envy their assertiveness and their ability to obtain what they want: a new pair of branded jeans or the latest mobile phone. Emotional, spiritual and ethical costs are not taken seriously at all.
Society despises Galerianki because they behave immorally, but this contempt contains more envy than genuine outrage. In the middle-school environment, where the authority of parents and teachers is worth only a few pennies, Galerianki lead the way. They are role models. Superficially condemned, in reality they are the only alternative to escaping the humiliating poverty and hopelessness of their family homes. Galerianki are a passport to a better world.
Grażyna Hanaf