Elein Joyce D.

Sapad

BSA-2B

Brides for Sale

As I am growing up, I have seen many couples that have been married but I never

encountered about the thing that young virgins are for sale and men will bid for them. It was a

tradition to a Bulgarian people; they celebrate it annually.

Only the young women from Bulgaria’s Kalaidzhi- on orthodox Christian subgroup of the

Roma community – will have different fate than the most. Young women are forced to leave school

as soon as they have their first period.

The culture is also renowned for a “bridal market” held up to four times a year where young

girls flock to muddy fields and parking lots around the country in red carpet gowns to meet

prospective husbands. They need to dress well and look presentable so that the parents of the man

that they will like them.

When the girls are asked if they wanted to go back in school they said yes and said they

also have their dreams and they also want to pursue it also want to have a better life. They also

said that they are not happy but what can they do, they grew up with this kind of culture.

The mother of the two young ladies in the video also experienced the bride for sale and it

was their father who won. It is also said that the ladies who are going to attend the celebration

needs to be virgin and young.

 The young women get special dresses to appear at this gathering and they hope to attract

the attention of respectable candidates. If the family and the future bride approve of the candidate

the courtship follows and eventually, if all goes well the couple will get married.

It is not only a culture, but it is also what their parents want because they want a good life and

better future for their children.

Although the generations-old market has been changed by technology and the economic

downturn, it’s still one of the main ways’ families are introduced to one another in a country where

they are economically and socially discriminated against.

Grooms pay an average of $290 to $350 for their young brides and price can go much

higher. They need to impress men so that they can have a higher bid and the women must be virgins

when they first marry. It is very important because lot of money is given for virginity.

The girls also admitted that the market is scary as there’s a possibility parents could decide

to give their daughter’s hand to a man who has more money, rather than one who is poor even if

she loved the poor man. There are some cases where a boy and a girl love each other but the girl

has dark eyes and if the boy’s parent are wealthy, they won’t want her as their daughter-in-law.

They will want a more beautiful one.

Maybe for us, as we are not from their country we see this thing as not so good because

we might think that we discourage the ladies to study and encourage them to be comfortable

because you’ll be having a husband soon, but we are also not in the right place to judge them

because that is what they practice and maybe some also would not want to do it but they had no

choice.
 The factors, which denote the price of the girl, are purely based on aesthetics – how nice

her clothes are, and how pretty she is. The idealized concept of beauty is fair skin, blonde hair, and

blue eyes, because of this it encourages the ladies to use cosmetics to try to appear to have a whiter

skin.

Most of the girls at the bride market are between the ages of 13 and 20. Often, girls are removed

from school since the roles for women tend to predominantly revolve around taking care of the

home and family. Many teens have not finished even their secondary education because they focus

on this wherein, they should be studying and achieving the things that they want through their

education.