Yadira and Livian met in her neighbourhood when Livian gave Yadira a lift in his car.
Since she was a pretty mulata and he was single, he asked her out. She agreed, and he took her on a few dates to bars to drink beer and eat chicken. After a few meetings (and some kisses exchanged), he appeared to her door with his bags in order to move in with her. Yadira lived alone in a two-room house but she was not particularly pleased with his move.71 However, since Cubans are often very bad at saying ‘no’ and since she wanted to avoid arguments in the new relationship, she allowed him to stay. After moving in, Livian immediately started to buy Yadira household utensils (such as a series of proper knives and a casserole), and to fix the house by painting and doing other little jobs. Via his work as a chauffeur, Livian had access to a car and he drove Yadira to work early in the mornings, saving her from East Havana’s very crowded and unreliable public buses. The car also allowed them to do little trips on weekends and to engage in Yadira’s favourite past time: spending a day at the beach without the bothersome public transportation of getting there. Almost every day, Livian brought home food and beer to which he had access via his work and she cooked a meal for him. Livian often took Yadira out to bars and restaurants on weekends and gave her 100 Cuban pesos (about 4,50 USD) every month. Yadira, however did not find him attractive – for her taste he was too dark-skinned (they were both mulatos but she was lighter than him); at 40 too old (even though they were nearly the same age), and not good-looking. However, this new life-style appealed to her and the extra money allowed her to fix her house and buy new
71 I usually shared Yadira’s flat with her but when this happened I was temporarily living elsewhere.
furniture. Moreover, Yadira’s biggest dream was to have a child and her mother and sister constantly urged her to settle down with a proper man who does not cheat on her, who works, and fixes the house.
Yadira’s and Livian’s story exemplifies the expectations of gendered reciprocal care that create and reproduce love and sexual relationships. Many of these intertwine with material possessions: Livian is interested in gaining access to Yadira’s house, she is attracted to his car, money, and the amusements he is able to offer her. Moreover, the fact that they are both over the usual childbearing age and childless emphasises the expectations that they both face from the part of kin and other people to settle down with a permanent partner and start a family – conforming also to (especially Yadira’s) personal wishes of parenthood.
For both men and women, wealth and material possessions are factors that increase their appeal as partners. Access to housing increases a person’s attractiveness in the eyes of possible partners and may sometimes represent the main reason for entering a relationship. Havana continues to be filled with deteriorated and over-crowded apartments, making anyone with access to decent housing a good catch.72 For men in particular, owning a residence grants advantage in attracting women, as this places a man in the position of a well-established man mature enough to start a family. For a woman, having a place of her own gives security and more freedom to choose her lovers.
Hamilton notes that since pre-revolutionary times, heterosexual relationships have provided Cuban women with a way to acquire housing (2012: 220, 224-226, 229). This increases the importance that having access to (decent) housing has to a man’s ability to attract partners. While Pertierra (2008) argues that during the post-Soviet era, the household has increased its symbolic value for women, I suggest that housing also holds central value to men. As the ideas of family and home/house (casa) often merge in Cuba (Pertierra 2008: 753-754), housing – through the notion of a “family home” – becomes connected to security, stability, and kinship continuity.73 Although in practice Havana’s on-going housing crisis often forces Cubans to negotiate this ideal, providing housing for his partner forms part of local conceptualisations of responsible masculinity and gives a man significant appeal in the field of love and sexuality. Women, on the other hand, may have ambivalent feelings about the issue when such gendered expectations are reversed. Thereby the importance of housing has to be understood in the context of the overall gendered
72 Havana Times (Morales 2013) points out that in Cuba there are approximately 3,3 million residences (for a population of over 11 million), 57 % of which are in a bad condition.
73 Housing is the most important material possession that is passed down as inheritance at old age, representing a significant piece of wealth throughout the life cycle. In other parts of the Caribbean, notions of kinship continuity are importantly connected to land (see Besson: 2002; Mintz 2010 [1989]). However, Karen Richman (2005) states that in Haiti, the house occupies a position of central importance.
conceptualisation of male and female contributions in a relationship.
Consumption is another factor closely intertwined with attraction, significantly gendered, and linked to conceptualisations of desirable
masculinity. Allen (2011: 38) notes that in contemporary Havana, wealth must be worn and consumed, and conforming to this view, when meeting a new man, my female informants usually assessed his wealth on the basis of the types of clothes, watch, and shoes he was wearing, as well as on the basis of his use of money. In order to be able to go out on a date, a man needs to have money: both men and women told me that a Cuban woman does not take any money with her when she goes out with a man. For female informants, dating was not only a fun diversion but importantly a means to eat and drink better than normally, to achieve various little gifts, and to fulfil their desires of accessing items and places that are considered luxuries (such as a weekend in a house at the beach or a pair of new shoes). One of my female informants was rather straightforward in her views about dating: the more she could get the man to buy her things, the more successful she considered the night.
FIG.8: YOUNG MEN ENJOYING A NIGHT OUT
In the context of most of my male informants’ low-income levels and Cuba’s high prices, such gendered courting practices place a big strain on a man’s income.74 A night out in a disco may take up an entire month’s wage, even
74 Most entertainment places operate in the expensive CUC economy. The majority of the population are paid in
Cu-more. While women spend their money primarily on food, buying things for their household, for their children, and consanguine (matrilateral) family members, men spend much of their money on the women with whom they are romantically involved or with whom they wish to be romantically involved.
This makes it important for a man to have money because without it, he often struggles to find a date or a partner.
Mark Hunter describes similar notions of desirable masculinity in South Africa, where in the midst of economic difficulties since the 1980s, the ability to consume and shower girlfriends with gifts became the qualities that women find the most attractive in men, as opposed to the previous views that emphasised hard work and the ability to provide bride wealth (Hunter 2009:
146-152). Cole and Thomas (2009: 22) connect this with a shift from an economy of production towards an economy of consumption. Although there are great differences between the Cuban context and the South African situation described by Hunter, his data shows similarities with the ways in which my female informants emphasised a man’s wealth and his ability to spend as central to his desirability as a partner. While Cuba can hardly be considered to represent an economy of consumption as such (there is little to consume), this does suggest that Cubans’ intensified desires for consumption (Porter 2008) intertwine importantly with gendered expectations in love and sexual relations – at the same time as exemplifying the continuing significance of generosity to notions of masculinity (Rosendahl 1997: 48, 62; see also Holbraad 2004). In a transformed situation, more long-term conceptualisations of masculinity are reworked by women to place new demands on men (Hunter 2009: 148).
Although there are men who enter into relationships with women in arrangements in which money flows from the woman to the man and not vice versa, this is an inversion of how things should go. Some of my male informants felt uncomfortable with such gendered exchanges and many women considered that a man should take money from a woman only in the case of an extreme emergency (for example, if his mother was very ill and he needed to buy medicine).
In the context of contemporary social relations, money is importantly gendered; it is something that men are expected to contribute to women in a system of reciprocal exchange where women respond with nurture, sexual access, and children. This does not mean that women would not desire sexual relationships with men if it were not for the money, but rather that money is
ban pesos (MN, moneda nacional) while most commodities are sold in pesos convertibles (CUC) – a currency that replaced the US dollar in circulation in 2004. The CUC economy is more expensive than the peso economy, yet CUCs are currently indispensable for day-to-day survival.
an object that allows men to create relationships; both sexual and non-sexual.
While women also have their own money, money is importantly the means via which a man expresses an interest towards a woman: giving her little material gifts and taking her out to eat, for drinks, or dancing. It is via his material contributions to her that she assesses whether he is a responsible man and someone who can help her in life. For women, receiving money and material support from their partner represents the correct way in which a man should behave towards them and confirms their femininity. A man’s provision of material support therefore becomes an evidence of his emotional commitment (Cole and Thomas 2009: 24).
Although wealth has played a role in women’s views of a desirable partner also in the past, its significance to men’s ability to attract partners seems to have gained more prominence since the 1990s. In her account on 1980’s Eastern Cuba, Rosendahl (1997: 69) states that even though women expected material contributions from their partners, a man’s wealth was not particularly significant to his attractiveness to women. Women stressed instead the importance of finding a “good” man who takes care of them and respects them (Rosendahl 1997: 69). However, in contemporary Havana, regular monetary contributions to his partner are what make a man “good.” This suggests that while the importance of a man’s wealth to his attractiveness to women is not anything new as such, its significance has intensified in the post-Soviet era in the context of the declining state contributions and the heightened monetisation of day-to-day life.
This relates ambiguously to the findings of Safa (2005, 2009) and Pertierra (2008), who argue that the post-Soviet era has seen an increase in the position of women as the primary providers for their households. Pertierra (2008) argues that during the Special Period, the work done by women has become more prevalent and important to the household economy, at the same time as men have lost their employment in the public state sector. Pertierra states that by engaging in informal employment at home, women contribute larger shares to the household economy and depend less on men. These dissimilarities between Pertierra’s and my findings may reflect differences between my lower-income habanero informants and her Santiaguero research participants.75 Nevertheless, this perspective does not take into account the high degree of female employment embraced by the state already during the Soviet era (e.g. Eckstein 1994: 144). Moreover, it does not take into consideration that even though employment in the state sector diminishes, which affects both men and women, men as well work extensively in the informal economy (“en la calle”) and their earnings are often higher than women’s. Stubbs (1997: 255) points out that since the 1990s, women “appear to
75 Safa’s argument, however, draws on data from Havana.
be retreating back into a family survival role.” Andaya’s (2007: 212-220) views on the increased feminisation of nurturance also point to this direction.
Even though she argues that matricentrality has become emphasised “both as a gendered ideology and a familial economic strategy” during the post-Soviet period due to the weakening socialist state (Andaya 2007: 220), she acknowledges that ideas about the male provider have simultaneously resurfaced (2007: 232).
As the state security nets continue to crumble, the current trend seems to be women’s greater dependence on their male partners. While it is likely that women contribute more to the household economy via their increased income-generating activities at home, this should be examined in the context of increased informal labour of all kinds in post-Soviet Cuba. On the other hand, everything has simultaneously become more expensive, particularly in the CUC economy. A neighbour cannot raise the price of manicures (5-10 pesos; about 0.20-0.40 USD) or the pancitos (little sandwiches) that she sells in the street for one peso (0.04 USD). As a result, such typically female forms of employment yield too little money to be the sole source of income. My ethnography suggests that in contemporary Havana – characterised by the seriously undermined state subsidies and services – women are significantly dependent on men’s contributions, even if in practice in some families and/
or households the majority of income may be provided by women.76 This is experienced through a type of an ideal on the male provider that characterises gender relations: if a woman is romantically/sexually involved with a man, there is a strong expectation on him to provide her with some money, gifts, and food.
Women’s beauty connects importantly with their possibilities to gain access to men’s material contributions. As beauty enables women to attract wealthy partners, it becomes an important asset that carries the potential to create real material consequences. Alexander Edmonds (2007), in discussing the huge popularity of plastic surgery amongst Brazilian women, argues that during the last two decades, neoliberal state policies in Brazil have made beauty more important for women in the midst of the constantly growing (economic and racial) inequalities and anxieties surrounding the new markets of work and sex, for in a neoliberal society, poor women can only gain social mobility via their beauty. Discussing Soviet-era Cuba, Rosendahl mentions that it is important for women to be attractive (1997: 66), but in the absence of other evidence it is difficult to say whether being beautiful has become more important to Cuban women during the post-Soviet period. While Cuba lacks
76 The Caribbean has a long history of non-white, lower-income women in particular working outside of home, although this has been connected more profoundly with the English-speaking Caribbean (e.g. Mintz 1971; Clarke 1974:
152; Wong 1996).
capitalist work markets, since the 1990s the increasing inequalities of wealth, the continuous deficiencies in state subsidies, changing possibilities of social mobility, and the heightened monetisation, may all contribute to making beauty more important for women. Beauty increases a woman’s chances of attracting wealthy (or foreign) partners – important in helping her to patch up for the deficiencies left by the declining state subsidies and systems of support. The significance of beauty to women highlights the ways in which focus on the body takes shape as a gendered process.
Although good looks may occasionally provide material advantages also to men, their appearance is not significant in the same way. A man may always overcome his lack of good looks with money. While I frequently heard women referring to a man as so unappealing that he could only attract a sexual partner with money, I never heard of a man being referred to as so unattractive that he could not attract a woman with money. Yet, when it comes to women, both men and women considered that some women are so unappealing that they could not attract a man (to have sex with them) even for a payment. Thus, money is a way for a man to overcome shortages in any of the other types of factors of attraction, while women have little cure if they are not pretty. 77 However, this conceptualisation does not as such suggest an opposition between love and money but rather between money and physical attractiveness.
At the same time, these contemporary conceptualisations of gendered attractiveness often result in the reproduction of situations that are reminiscent of Caribbean sexual arrangements in the past. Frequently, the types of wealthier men sought after by many women are relatively older and lighter-skinned than the women with whom they partner.78 The current meanings relating to beauty, attraction, and wealth thereby reproduce inequalities between men and women and inequalities amongst men and amongst women that draw on more long-term gendered and racialised conceptualisations and hierarchies in their practical outcome. Women experience such pressures importantly via the significance of beauty as an avenue for social mobility because they gain power and agency as sexual beings via their bodies – the potential locus of both seductive beauty and reproduction. At the same time, the contemporary importance of wealth and consumption in gender relations places pressure on men to have money for without wealth, a man may struggle to find a partner – and eventually, to have children.
77 On the other hand, the conceptualisation of men as ‘by their nature’ constantly desirous of sexual contact contra-dicts this idea.
78 This relates ambiguously to racialised conceptualisations of beauty. Both men and women named a “mulata /mulato with green eyes” as their beauty ideal.
This suggests gendered differences in the ways love and sexuality are experienced and shows how forms of emotion connect with gendered notions of the body and attractiveness. While women become valued via their
beautiful bodies as objects of male passion, men become marked most of all by their ability to provide reciprocal contributions.