Mail-order Bride Girl

A mail-order bride is a woman who lists herself in catalogs (online or otherwise) and is selected by men for marriage. In nineteenth-century America, mail-order brides came from well-developed areas in the East to marry men in Western frontier lands. In the twentieth century, the trend was towards women living in developing countries seeking men in more-developed nations. In the twenty-first century, the trend is now based primarily on internet-based meeting places which do not per se qualify as mail order bride services. The majority of the women listed on in the twentieth-century and twenty-first-century services are from Southeast Asia, countries of the former Soviet Union and (to a lesser extent) from Latin America. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union large numbers of eastern European women have advertised themselves in such a way, primarily from Russia, Belarus, Ukraine and Moldova. Men who list themselves in such publications are referred to as "mail-order husbands". Mail-order husbands come from primarily (in alphabetical order) Australia, Canada, Germany, Japan, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan, United Kingdom and the United States.
The term "mail-order bride" is both criticized by owners (and customers) of international marriage agencies and used by them as an easily recognizable term. It has been pointed out that there is a discrepancy between how international adoptions are regarded ("saving a child") and how international marriages are regarded ("buying a wife").