In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

>> 79 3 Outsourcing the American Dream Transforming Men’s Virtual Fantasies into Social Realities We are the disposable gender. —U.S.-based agency owner My whole life is abstract. . . . I don’t find myself feeling really close to people. I don’t feel really close to my family. . . . I’ve realized I’m just sort of going through the motions, so on some level, going outside the country is an attempt to, you know, get past that cynical, detached experience that I have here. —Jason Stereotypical perceptions of “buying” women through mail-order bride catalogues no longer hold true for men I interviewed seeking a foreign bride. The process, players, and reasons for seeking foreign women have changed; not all fit the stereotype of the awkward and lonely guy with Coke-bottle glasses searching the pages of a magazine from the privacy of his bedroom. Nor are these solitary journeys in search for a wife. Chat-room discussants on Planet-Love.com invest months, even years, sharing “travel reports,” swapping dating and marital experiences, and discussing cultural differences and immigration procedures.1 Computers have dramatically altered the process and places of dating, facilitating quick and accessible forums for men to communicate virtually with women in other countries as well as with each other. As I followed men in their search for a bride, it was not only their desire for a Latina that interested me but the pleasure they found discussing their experiences and perspectives with other like-minded men in chat rooms—a process that had not existed in previous mail-order bride exchanges. Men logged on to 80 > 81 “otherness,” one that might transcend and transform the self, located in the “passionate heart” of Latin America. Web companies reach men through ads in business and sports magazines and newspapers such as Men’s Journal, USA Today, and Penthouse, pitched to men working at large corporations, and through the Internet, the most effective medium. International marriage brokers (IMBs) promise not simply marriage but a pleasurable vacation and the prospect of dramatically changing one’s life. For example, one company owner explained to me, “Part of the challenge of this industry is that I have to find a way to get these guys off their chair—to do something about all their complaining. They have to know that this kind of thing will change their lives forever!”4 Another said soberly, “It’s a hard business because we’re dealing with people’s fantasies, their dreams, their neuroses.”5 The critical role IMBs play in empowering male clients to maximize their return by importing what they consider to be a better breed of women situates this industry at the curious crossroads of self-transformation, social engineering, and global business values of risk. Even though men are not actually buying women, the process of virtual engagements with potential brides does tend to promote a consumer fantasy of change wrapped up in the exotic profile of a Latin American woman. Thus, I argue that outsourcing the fantasy of the nuclear family to developing nations follows the logic of transnational capitalism and corporate multiculturalism. Men can get a younger, more feminine woman who they are told “expects less” in developing nations, and women’s difference is advertised as infinitely malleable, their bodies an investment that will revitalize oneself, the family, and the nation. The irony here is that while men turn to the marketplace of marriage to act more freely on their desires away from the scrutiny of social dictates and state laws, their search for authentic love and a more innocent woman reproduces state power and national ideology, as both men and the state rely on the arbitration of love to distinguish authentic from fraudulent foreign marriages. Men lament that U.S. women are afflicted by their selfish pursuit of a career outside the home, while Latin American women represent the utopic prospect of rejuvenating and purifying the boundaries of the self, the nuclear family, and the nation. Latin American women embody the “last frontier,” merging colonial and new cyber-frontier possibilities. Thus, finding a foreign bride converges with four discourses: colonialism, modern self-help movements , transnational capitalism, and futuristic ideals of flexibility, mobility, and a postracial society. These themes demonstrate how technology and ideas about globalization are incorporated into men’s everyday lives as a 82 > 83 their attendance at the tour, while others found themselves in the awkward situation of not telling women for fear of hurting their feelings or...

Share