Chapter Text
It was a common notion in feminist theory that oppression always benefitted from the othering of women, even amongst themselves.
Simone de Beauvoir famously spoke of female jealousy as something born out of survival rather than romance, and the need to measure oneself against another woman as a product of patriarchy. After all, in spaces where male attention was the capital exchanged for safety, the instinct to vie for it grew like a second skin.
In such frameworks, romance and love were dripping and barbed; things to lap at like dogs ten days starved.
There's a boot on every woman's neck and to procure a man's heart is to lift it. Except the other shoe always dropped and the sickly envy of the more beautiful, the sexier, the other was nothing more than two open palms forcing space between the jugular and the sole.
Svetlana moved in this space like a cat.
Every piece of sparkling jewelry, the careful enunciation of her words, her careless indifference— cloaks upon cloaks slipped on and off like soft silks and thick bear fur, a dance that never showed her true hide.
But the lighter the cloak, of course, the better. The right speech and the perfectly-done makeup was everything that her big curls and warm skin lacked. The less of a fuss she made of herself, the better. Fair women's tears shone like diamonds but women like Svetlana were meant for sex and sorrow is only hot as long as a man's raspy tongue can lick it off.
The bubbly, the gentle, and the airheaded were meant for the other. The only real option she had was the femme fatale in heavy pelts and big, half-lidded eyes hiding behind sheen smoke and scented tobacco. For women like her, liberation meant walking above it all, stepping on the fingers that tried to glaze her heels.
Turning on the fellow sister, however, is unbecoming. And resentment is ugly.
Blackness isn't allowed ugliness— you are only allowed one sin.
Growing up in the Orthodox church, sins were scrubbed off and buried in white linen. But being born dark meant you could only wash yourself of every other sin and there was no joy in any of it, in the first place. The solemn acceptance of the ritualistic prayer only reminded Svetlana that she was not going to heaven.
She'd grown up as the most devout girl in all of Moscow, probably Russia. She prayed and she scrubbed and she begged and; most important of all, she was never jealous. Envy was a sin she hadn't needed to scrub off once.
And yet, disillusionment came with age and belief faded when no layer came off clean enough.
She'd grown into the most feminist woman in all of Moscow, probably Russia. She read and deconstructed and sharpened and; she was not sure if she practiced what she believed. Envy was a sin she learned at thirty.
And yet, she thought herself in circles, endless loops of self-awareness and sour longing that led to nothing.
At the end of the day, there was no philosophy to turn to. In truth, she was green in the face and if anyone asked after a couple shots of tequila too many, she'd say she fucking hated Rose Landry.
The sight of her made her hot in the face, glassy-eyed.
When Rose Landry cried in movies, her tears were fat diamonds— opulence dripped onto her cheekbones, making them shine, powdered in something precious. Her lips swelled like ripening plums and her eyes widened like round jade stones. When her polished eyebrows quivered and her cream-colored skin reddened, she looked expensive.
Svetlana, who only looked vulgar when she showed open emotion, wanted to bite the sides of her face until she tasted fresh apples.
But because she treaded above it all, and she was hellbent on intellectualizing her emotions, she did not frown when a man slid up to her in a bar. She didn't flinch when the stranger smiled, showing off his pearly white veneers. She even looked uninterested as he shoved a phone in her face and spoke with a voice like trimmed velvet she couldn't quite make out.
“You seen this yet?”
ROSE LANDRY DATING ANOTHER HOCKEY PLAYER? THE AWARD-WINNING ACTRESS WAS RECENTLY SPOTTED WITH OTTAWA CENTAURS' CLIFF MARLOW
Spring of 2021 had not brought a single new beginning for her, only Shane and Ilya, whose wedding she'd be attending in the summer. It had certainly not brought her any news from her former fuckbuddy other than the sparse updates that trickled down through Ilya.
Two years prior, Cliff had made the idiotic decision to move to Ottawa chasing her childhood best friend while Svetlana stuck to the business-smart decision to stay static in Boston.
Still, second-hand news didn't exclude the big things like: Cliff Marlow is dating a movie star. She'd known the reason they hadn't been together again for years and, apparently, now the rest of the world found out too.
Cliff had never tried to go public with Svetlana.
Then again, he'd never tried to date Svetlana.
It stung that when he finally had gone for a woman, she'd been everything Svetlana wasn't, from her dove-feathered skin to the sweet personality. Rose Landry had never been out of place in a room in her life but Svetlana had bonded with Cliff over skins too dark for most rooms in the league first and fell for him after. Being wholly fair, she didn't realize she wanted it to be her until weeks after he was gone. They'd already stopped talking by then.
None of it mattered now.
Now, the man sitting beside her was itching to reach for her thigh and Svetlana was itching for a distraction. His hand was big and calloused, warm even through her thick-knit dress.
“Your boy toy’s finally locked someone down.”
Cliff Marlow had not been Svetlana’s anything for over two years.
She took her glass and threw her head back, even if it wasn't how you were meant to drink the smoky whiskey she was sipping on, and smiled at him like a fox from a fable.
“That's a pity,” she purred, lips on his mouth before she even bothered with a line; he was already kissing her.
The sex was good. The man was gorgeous, and Svetlana hung off his biceps like her personal playground. She enjoyed herself because, despite everything, she loved to fuck, found nothing wrong with chasing it, and preened at being called sultry and sexual.
She could've done with any other man, maybe one without a weird fixation on ‘stealing Marlow's girl’ but she'd been slowing down in the last couple of years and it was good enough fun.
It was only the next morning, hours after she'd kicked him out of her bed that she started to truly wallow, half-naked at the center of her mattress.
The tabloids had taken a shockingly long time to catch onto Rose and Cliff's relationship considering neither of them had been subtle in the past. Then again, it was the first time they seemed to care about privacy, much less secrecy. Sourly, she thought it might mean it was true love this time.
The reveal had actually been a paparazzi picture of the both of them, clear as day, in the middle of New York of all places. Rose had become an increasingly big deal with every year that passed and Cliff was a minor God within the hockey world after he and Ilya built the Centaurs up from nothing. Had she been there, she'd tease them both for their recklessness and pretend she actually knew either of them.
In the comfortable privacy of her own room, however, all she could fixate on was how Rose Landry looked like swallowing a honeysuckle. Swift, looping cursive hanging off Marlow's arm. Annoyingly handsome man that he was, if Rose was delicate in her beauty, he was a bright, blooming thing— dewy marigolds under a blinding sun.
At that moment, she hated both of them equally.
Just as she was playing with the idea of getting drunk for a second night in a row and reaching out to a man she had nothing to do with anymore, Ilya's ringtone saved her.
“Ilyusha,” she snapped, unnecessarily mean.
“Sveta, it's past one in the afternoon. Not even I'm sulking this late.”
He was being kind; a peace offering in the lack of further questioning.
She sighed. “What do you want?”
“You need to come to my wedding. Be my Maid of honor or whatever the American tradition is. And give a speech; he will never admit it but Shanya loves wedding speeches.”
Just like every other time she talked to Ilya, her muscles loosened and every knot came undone with softness.
“Oh, it's not because you love wedding speeches?” She hummed.
“The details are irrelevant. The wedding will be on July 10. It's a Saturday so we're celebrating from Friday to Sunday. Yuna insisted.”
“Are you sure it wasn't your idea?” She snorted. “Every time one of our fathers' coworkers got married, you made me sit through the entire thing because it was ‘romantic’.”
“Well,” he tutted, “Yuna knows me. I'll see you in July.”
“Yes,” she conceded, even though the confirmation was more of a formality than a confirmation. They both knew she'd be there if the sky itself fell down.
“Good. I'm going to go back to bed with my beautiful husband now.”
“You were just giving me shit about it being noon.”
Ilya, however, was completely unrepentant and she could all but hear his grin through the phone as she called a sweet, “love you, bye” before hanging up.
“I love you too, Ilyusha,” she rushed out, just as the line went dead, leaving her alone with her shit mood. There were worse things in the world.
But even the thought of seeing Cliff and Rose— their perfect relationship in real time— had her twisting and squirming months in advance.
Simone de Beauvoir, with her own bouts of jealous weakness, would have to forgive her.