Ms. Interpretation

For those of you who don't live in the blogosphere, yesterday was International Women's Day. In theory, IWD is a day to celebrate women's accomplishments, discuss women's issues, burn bras (JUST KIDDING PLEASE DON'T REVOKE MY FEMINIST CARD I'LL RECITE FIVE HAIL HILLARYS!), etc. In Budapest, not so much. Now, I understand the difficulties with translating from English to Hungarian, especially when there are Ws involved (Prof Kuronya: "Let v be a wector"), but I am still baffled as to how "International Women's Day" got translated into "Valentine's Day II," especially because the latter is not even in Hungarian. Somehow, though, it did, so while women elsewhere are protesting the Sex-and-the-Citification of women's portrayal in the media, women in Budapest are being recognized with...shopping discounts, flowers, and chocolate. Paging Sarah Jessica Parker.
Now, I have no objection in principle to giving women chocolate. Especially if by "women," we mean "me." However, I don't think chocolate is an appropriate substitute for respect or equality.* If you think about it, if women were given equal wages for equal work, we could buy our OWN chocolate (!). It's so crazy, it just might work!
Also, really, Hungarians don't need much more practice in sexualizing women. They're really good at that. This is not to say that Americans aren't, rather to say that I'm writing this post while in Hungary and I can't even remember what I was doing last IWD in the US, so I can't make any good observations. But it's kind of troubling how little Hungarian men seem to understand the word "No." Actually, I guess that's not that troubling, but the fact that they don't understand the word "Nem" is. Really guys, even I understand "nem," and I'm as ignorant an American as you'll find anywhere. I'll tell you what: you learn that, keep your hands to yourself, and you can save yourself some forints on flowers. Deal? Good. Have a Hersheys.



*Though I'll admit it comes damn close. Especially dark chocolate.