The Female Factor: Subtle Shift at the Gypsy Bride Market

Meet the tinkers of Thrace, semi-nomadic Roma who in the early 21st century are among the few in Europe hewing to ancient ways. A woman may govern Germany and men in Sweden may care for infants. But in this corner of southeastern Europe, that thinking is quite foreign, with — so far — limited impact.

Technically, the young women at this traditional St. Todor’s Day “market” were not for sale. But it is at this fair, held each year on the first Saturday of Orthodox Christian Lent, that the Kalaidzhi (as the estimated 18,000 Thracian tinkers are known) conduct the complex negotiations on a bride price that traditionally lead to marriage.

The identity of this semi-nomadic Roma group is based on the ancient craft of its menfolk: producing and repairing pots, pans and caldrons. For centuries, these smiths have scattered in ones or twos in Bulgarian villages to practice this craft, and they get together rarely for events like the St. Todor’s fair.

This is therefore one of the few opportunities for teenagers to meet other Kalaidzhi — and potential spouses. Dating is not really an option when teenage boys and girls are forbidden to meet without an adult. Marriage outside the group is equally taboo.

Leaning against his car, surveying the scene, Hristos Georgiev, 18, was pleased to be wrapping up negotiations with the father of Donka Dimitrova, an 18-year-old he expected to marry weeks later. Bargaining had narrowed to between 10,000 and 15,000 levs, or $7,500 to $11,300, well more than a year’s worth of the average Bulgarian’s wages of 8,400 levs. He said he saved the money working construction in Cyprus.

According to Velcho Krustev, an ethnographer with the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, “the man is not buying a wife, but her virginity.” The payment ensures the bride will be treated well by her new family, he said.

Good looks nevertheless command a price. “If she’s really beautiful, the price can go up” to 20,000 or 25,000 levs, Mr. Georgiev said, within easy earshot of his prospective bride. (Others said a great beauty might fetch 40,000 levs.)

“I don’t approve,” said Ms. Dimitrova, who unlike less educated Bulgarian Roma girls recently completed a landscaping course. “You shouldn’t look at the money,” she said, “but at the person, his way of speaking, thinking, feeling and all the rest.”

Her cousin Todorka was blunt. The money, she said, “is no guarantee that the marriage will last forever. They can still find another better one 10 days later.”

Kalaidzhi families usually marry off daughters between the ages of 16 and 20 and take them out of school by eighth grade, allegedly to prevent their being “stolen” by suitors. (How often true bride theft occurs is not clear. Young people said it is often a face-saving family story when a daughter elopes.)

Kalaidzhi women have long woven their daughters’ dowries, and stoked the fires for their husbands’ craft. They are wives, mothers and assistant tinsmiths.

Education has not been a priority: the Open Society found in 2004 that one in five Bulgarian Roma women are illiterate — almost double the share among men. Only 10 percent of Bulgarian Roma women have secondary education, according to the World Bank, compared with 16 percent for the men.

However, support for marriage traditions is waning. A 2007 study by Amalipe, a nongovernmental organization in Bulgaria, found that 52 percent of Roma opposed parents' choosing the spouse of their children, with 35 percent in favor. Only 18 percent of Roma supported the bride price; 69 percent rejected it.

Kalaidzhi are among the most tradition-bound of Roma. But even they are changing — to the distaste of elders like Ivan Kolev, 73.

 

Bits: McDonald's Makes Subtle Play for Children Online

  There are few references to food on McWorld, a virtual world created for McDonald’s.

McWorld, a Web site for children sponsored by McDonald’s, offers visitors the chance to create characters, decorate digital treehouses and go on a quest in a virtual world.

French fries, hamburgers and apple pies are nowhere to be seen.

This is the latest in online marketing, where the hope is that a site’s visitor will naturally associate the brand with a pleasurable activity. It is a type of advertising that has less in common with a 30-second television spot than with a product placement in a movie.

It is also a glimpse of the future, said Mark Smale, a senior vice president with Creata, the Australian company that created the site for McDonald’s. Mr. Smale said in an interview that companies are realizing that, when going online, the best strategy is to forgo immediate sales in order to build lasting emotional relationships with children. In that sense, McWorld is a more sophisticated version of the sites that Matt Richtel discusses in an article about the online marketing of food to children.

“It’s not overtly aimed at trying to sell product,” Mr. Smale said. “If it is, the people you’re trying to reach won’t be interested, they won’t be engaged.”

This approach, known as engagement-based marketing, has become an important tool for companies marketing to children. Mr. Smale’s clients also include Kellogg’s, Nestle, and Coca-Cola. At an industry conference in New York in February, about 50 people gathered to hear Mr. Smale talk about Creata’s approach.

Critics see such marketing as an unfair way to manipulate children who may not realize what is going on. And there are parts of McWorld and other food sites that encourage purchases. McWorld prompts children to enter codes from Happy Meal boxes to unlock things like special gear for their online avatars.

Kathryn Montgomery, a communications professor at American University who studies marketing to youth, said it would be more honest if McWorld did feature McDonald’s food. At least then the company’s intentions would be clear.

Modern marketing, she said, “is about kids playing with the brand, making friends with the brand, interacting with the brand and communicating with friends in the branding environment.” But in the end, she said, “it’s all about pushing the product.”

McDonald’s dismisses concerns that children cannot distinguish between entertainment and marketing online. Heather Oldani, a company spokeswoman, said McDonald’s had more than 50 years of experience in communicating with young consumers, and that it followed its own guidelines and those of the industry about what is age-appropriate.

“Our standards are high, both from an industry and self-regulatory perspective. And those standards are consistent across all of our communications, whether online or traditional advertising,” she wrote in an e-mail.

Mr. Smale said it would be inappropriate to have a Web site whose sole purpose was to sell food to children. But he said that engaging them with games and other forms of entertainment was different, and entirely acceptable.

Most restrictions imposed on Web sites aimed at children center on privacy. Players on McWorld are anonymous so the site complies with the federal Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act. But there are no regulations when it comes to pitching products to children under the guise of entertainment, as there are on television.

The limiting factor on how hard to push sales online is whether companies believe they will drive children away, Mr. Smale said. Television viewers learn to tune out commercials during their favorite shows, a strategy that does not work as well when the commercials are embedded into the entertainment itself.

Branded Web sites work for food companies because it is “getting them out of the position of interrupting the fun,” Mr. Smale said. ” They’re part of the fun.”