Does Balzac Age reflect modern-day Russia?
Balzac Age is really only about Moscow because people don’t live like that outside of Moscow. There are fewer opportunities outside of big cities, and salaries tend to be much lower. Many Russians still live in poverty. Additionally, the older a woman gets, the harder it is to find a partner. Russia has one of the lowest male life expectancies in the industrialized world – just 56 years, the same as in Bangladesh. So as women get older, there are fewer men to choose from. And they become pickier, more discriminating, as a byproduct of age and wisdom. Q: What does “Balzac Age” mean? Has the connotation changed? A: It’s a flowery way of saying “old maid” or “a woman of a certain age.” It comes from the Honoré de Balzac novella, A Woman of Thirty. In Russia, the term means a woman over the age of 30. The perception of the term is changing in Russia. Thirty isn’t so old now in Moscow. But there’s no pride in the term. It’s a way of saying your freshness date has expired; you’ve entered you
