4. Health and Beauty
Without wanting to sound rude, Odesites don't seem to care about their health, at least not in a way Westerners would. Beauty is seen as more important than health, and the link between health and beauty does not seem to be very clear-cut. This is not to say that there is a lack of physically fit people or an ideal of a fit body here. It is absolutely present, whether in the way that every young woman who considers herself beautiful dresses to show off her physical strengths to the best advantage (key words: tight leather trousers, high heels, plump lips, tight tops, belly-button blouses) or in the fact that the whole town is full of shops selling all kinds of sports drinks, vitamins, and protein mixtures supposed to boost muscle growth.
At the same time, the people who do sport are not particularly conspicuous - there are no big fitness centers like in Western cities, and almost no people doing sports in public spaces. Nor are there any joggers to be found in the parks on the weekend. However, on one Friday evening, I notice a flock of parents waiting outside the door of a judo club in the suburbs, and there are a few cellars in the city center that look like gyms. There are also plenty of open-air gyms in the city's parks and green spaces. I will probably have to wait until the summer to see how much they are used.
But what is really striking is the popularity of all kinds of fast and junk food - in a city full of good and also locally affordable places to eat! The same goes for the popularity of energy drinks. Apparently, to counterbalance both phenomena, locals also seem to be buying Actimel and other supposedly hyper-healthy products with great enthusiasm.
When McDonald's reopened in Odesa at the end of March 2023, after almost a year's hiatus, there was a queue stretching into the street on Derybasivska for several days, and a convoy of cars wanting to use the Mc’s drive-in on the Lustdorf road in the Hadjibei (formerly Malinovsky) district blocked a lane of traffic on the first few evenings after the reopening. Kentucky Fry Chicken is also popular, as are local fast-food places, offering burgers, hot dogs, and of course, the Odesian staple - shawarma (incidentally, Odesites themselves say that a really Odesa-style shawarma is one that includes potatoes).
Botox I mentioned in another context before, but the heavy use of this product only underlines the fact that beauty is more important than health. In fact, this is also true for gentlemen: there is no shortage of tanning salons in the city, which are also used by men, and although unusual for Western tastes, it is not atypical to see gentlemen in a restaurant in the evening wearing snow-white jogging pants that are obviously worn for that purpose and are not a sign of a sporty lifestyle but of a sense of style.
The men's hairstyles are also neat and tidy. For women, the importance of beauty treatments is reflected in the abundance of beauty and hairdressing salons. And these salons are often open until late at night, which is nice: it's nice to walk through a dark city and see a manicurist or hairdresser working intently on a client behind a brightly lit window…
Smoking is extremely widespread, and only recently, complain the locals, have the authorities started to ban smoking indoors. But with one caveat: for the most part, puffing e-cigarettes is still allowed. Indeed, e-cigarette shops and kiosks are everywhere, and regardless of gender and age, a significant proportion of the population seems to be devoted customers - not to say hopeless addicts - of the product. Smoking e-cigs can be witnessed on the street, in cafes, restaurants, in cars, and on public transport, in bars and nightclubs, of course, but also at the office desk. The smoke of e-cigarettes, with all their flavors and aromas, seems to float in a thick cloud all over Odesa…
Of course, Odesa Telegram channels are also filled with constant news of traffic accidents - on the morning of April 9, 2023, for example, a police captain ran over a police chief. It cannot be denied that the news in question was immediately commented on by jokers. I bet the police captain at the wheel wasn't wearing a seat belt, either. Because that's not how it's done: real men don’t wear a seat belt... Well, maybe very rarely, in modern Western cars seat belt is being used, but in old Ladas, Moskvich’es and in slightly more luxurious Volgas no-one does it. Because, as the locals say: since I don't have health insurance, there's no point in wearing a seat belt. Better to die than be ruined by the medical costs.
This leads to the last topic - health insurance - regarding the subject of health. Because general health insurance is clearly non-existent here. 'Obviously' in the sense that if the state does provide some medical care, it is only immediate. People are mostly not insured, and when my employer recently announced that it was going to reimburse employees medical bills on a case-by-case basis, which does not include massage and alternative medicine, it immediately sparked a lively and amusing debate among young Ukrainian colleagues, mainly about intimate massage and its benefits.
At the heart of the jokes, however, was the fact that this kind of benevolence by the employer was new and incomprehensible to young Ukrainians who had never seen an employer offering any kind of medical benefits at all.
At the same time, the people who do sport are not particularly conspicuous - there are no big fitness centers like in Western cities, and almost no people doing sports in public spaces. Nor are there any joggers to be found in the parks on the weekend. However, on one Friday evening, I notice a flock of parents waiting outside the door of a judo club in the suburbs, and there are a few cellars in the city center that look like gyms. There are also plenty of open-air gyms in the city's parks and green spaces. I will probably have to wait until the summer to see how much they are used.
But what is really striking is the popularity of all kinds of fast and junk food - in a city full of good and also locally affordable places to eat! The same goes for the popularity of energy drinks. Apparently, to counterbalance both phenomena, locals also seem to be buying Actimel and other supposedly hyper-healthy products with great enthusiasm.
When McDonald's reopened in Odesa at the end of March 2023, after almost a year's hiatus, there was a queue stretching into the street on Derybasivska for several days, and a convoy of cars wanting to use the Mc’s drive-in on the Lustdorf road in the Hadjibei (formerly Malinovsky) district blocked a lane of traffic on the first few evenings after the reopening. Kentucky Fry Chicken is also popular, as are local fast-food places, offering burgers, hot dogs, and of course, the Odesian staple - shawarma (incidentally, Odesites themselves say that a really Odesa-style shawarma is one that includes potatoes).
Botox I mentioned in another context before, but the heavy use of this product only underlines the fact that beauty is more important than health. In fact, this is also true for gentlemen: there is no shortage of tanning salons in the city, which are also used by men, and although unusual for Western tastes, it is not atypical to see gentlemen in a restaurant in the evening wearing snow-white jogging pants that are obviously worn for that purpose and are not a sign of a sporty lifestyle but of a sense of style.
The men's hairstyles are also neat and tidy. For women, the importance of beauty treatments is reflected in the abundance of beauty and hairdressing salons. And these salons are often open until late at night, which is nice: it's nice to walk through a dark city and see a manicurist or hairdresser working intently on a client behind a brightly lit window…
Smoking is extremely widespread, and only recently, complain the locals, have the authorities started to ban smoking indoors. But with one caveat: for the most part, puffing e-cigarettes is still allowed. Indeed, e-cigarette shops and kiosks are everywhere, and regardless of gender and age, a significant proportion of the population seems to be devoted customers - not to say hopeless addicts - of the product. Smoking e-cigs can be witnessed on the street, in cafes, restaurants, in cars, and on public transport, in bars and nightclubs, of course, but also at the office desk. The smoke of e-cigarettes, with all their flavors and aromas, seems to float in a thick cloud all over Odesa…
Of course, Odesa Telegram channels are also filled with constant news of traffic accidents - on the morning of April 9, 2023, for example, a police captain ran over a police chief. It cannot be denied that the news in question was immediately commented on by jokers. I bet the police captain at the wheel wasn't wearing a seat belt, either. Because that's not how it's done: real men don’t wear a seat belt... Well, maybe very rarely, in modern Western cars seat belt is being used, but in old Ladas, Moskvich’es and in slightly more luxurious Volgas no-one does it. Because, as the locals say: since I don't have health insurance, there's no point in wearing a seat belt. Better to die than be ruined by the medical costs.
This leads to the last topic - health insurance - regarding the subject of health. Because general health insurance is clearly non-existent here. 'Obviously' in the sense that if the state does provide some medical care, it is only immediate. People are mostly not insured, and when my employer recently announced that it was going to reimburse employees medical bills on a case-by-case basis, which does not include massage and alternative medicine, it immediately sparked a lively and amusing debate among young Ukrainian colleagues, mainly about intimate massage and its benefits.
At the heart of the jokes, however, was the fact that this kind of benevolence by the employer was new and incomprehensible to young Ukrainians who had never seen an employer offering any kind of medical benefits at all.
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