The 8th March holiday is one of the legacies of the Soviet project: however, as with many other elements of this legacy, most people have a feeling that “it has always been this way.” Well, let’s say a person lives in an apartment privatized by his parents, which they once received for free under Brezhnev, Khrushchev, and sometimes even Stalin, and thinks that this is normal. And you don’t need to take out a mortgage. And this, by the way, is really normal when you don’t need to take out a mortgage... But that’s not what today is about. International Women’s Day on March 8, established by the Soviet government, which, within the framework of the ideology of that time, symbolized the complete and final victory of emancipation, in our society took root instantly and well, like Michurin’s pear shoot on an apple tree. Let me remind you about emancipation, otherwise, in the context of feminism, someone has forgotten... There was such an ideological trend, such a social movement that arose around the middle of the 19th century: a movement for equalizing women's political and economic rights with people. Not with a man, I repeat, but with a person: that’s how it was understood then; in fact, the word “emancipation” is literally translated as “humanization.” Well, there is a universal human right to vote in elections, own property, and hold public, including leadership positions: and for some time society has come to understand the need to extend these rights to women too. And they spread it. And since the USSR considered itself a state at the forefront of all world progressive trends, then with this holiday - “International Women's Day March 8th” - it secured the complete and final humanization of all citizens living on its territory. In other words, in its original meaning, the holiday of March 8 personified the Great Victory of Equality: from now on, women are the same as men (well, at least from a legal point of view). However, as often happens with meanings, in the process of their existence and development the meaning sometimes changes significantly. Sometimes it changes to the exact opposite... Already on March 7 of each year, millions of anxious and fussy men begin to frantically move along the most intricate trajectories between jewelry, shoe, flower, and sometimes just confectionery and wine shops. Don’t ask a man where he is running so purposefully, with his clear gaze focused, on March 7: he is running to the store. During these hours, he is like the gladiator Gaius Julius Caesar, who is faced with a clear and unalternative task in the battle of Zela. Veni, Vidi, Vici: to come, to see, to win, that is, to break through, withstand, and buy, overcoming numerous obstacles, such as flower sellers raising their prices five times a year, and traffic jams. Some, according to rumors, even teach in poetry that exactly 8 March to pronounce them. Which, by the way, is in itself a confirmation of the social importance and significance of the holiday: if at least something can force a modern adult to read and learn a poem at least once a year, then by default it should already be welcomed. They say that even the head of state this year he will congratulate Russian women with poetry. Of course, on March 7, a lathered and fussing man will sometimes have a crazy thought that is something between “What is going on?..” and “Who needs all this?..”, however it is instantly repressed into the subconscious, where it remains peacefully at rest, mixed with previous gestalts that have not been closed since childhood. In his understanding, tomorrow will come the very day when he will have to tell his woman that she is the best, special, one and only. And if he has several women - well, besides his wife, there is also a mother, grandmother, daughter, granddaughter, mistress, daughter and granddaughter of a mistress - then pronounce this text addressed to each of them: which, of course, will require remarkable emotional abilities. He is somewhat reassured by the fact that February 23 has already happened, and he is already in hisaddress I heard something similar at the same time as receiving shaving lotion. In other words, the celebration of March 8 from International Equality Day somehow insidiously managed to evolve over a hundred years into the day of Uniqueness and Exclusivity. According to Clara Zetkin and Rosa Luxemburg, probably on this day it was women who were supposed to give gifts to men: as a sign that they can now afford to do everything that only men did before, and that they now have money this is all there too. So what is happening now, quite possibly, would have caused superstitious horror among these two Soviet émancipée: they would have decided that a hundred years later, descendants again forbade women to manage money and visit public places without the accompaniment of men. Well, okay, you say, what do you want, psychologist , it’s a pity, or what?.. Well, let men buy gifts for themselves, learn poetry, and shudder every year when they see that March 7 is on the calendar again: The Great Eve... I don’t feel sorry. I repeat: for the mere fact of converting once In the year of poetry, a lot can already be forgiven, and even more so one cannot but rejoice at the desire of a man to say necessary and important words to a woman close to her, or to please her with a pleasant little thing, like a new car or a trip to Bali for a couple of weeks. I regret something else. .About the fact that all this happens only once a year. As for me, a man who loves his women, and in general loves life (I wonder if it’s a coincidence that both words begin with the letter “F”?) Women’s Day should be celebrated and celebrated if not 365 days a year, then at least every day when even the slightest reason is given for this. And if this reason is suddenly not provided, then the man can still provide it. Remember the wonderful Baron Munchausen from the Soviet film, who decided to give his hometown the 32nd of May?.. Well, why, in this case, is not a man able to conjure a calendar so that the 8th of March falls on every day of the year? ?..Not the seventh of March, I repeat - I understand how difficult and difficult it is for men on this day - but the eighth. The same Gorinsky Munchausen told his woman that she would wear a wedding dress not once in her life, like everyone else, but every day: and that they would get married every day?.. Well, then what is the problem of making the lives of your women one a continuous holiday of Uniqueness and Exclusivity, without allocating some special calendar date for this?..Won’t there be enough poems? Or money?..And you take a closer look at your women. Maybe they are not waiting for poetry? And not even money?.. And not even Dutch flowers that went crazy in the freezer during a week-long sea voyage?.. Maybe they are waiting precisely for the feeling of being a woman: a feeling for which the modern world, with its militant feminism, leaves everything less space, and for which many already have to wait for one single spring day of the year? to say, officially... Because it’s a date. But on all other calendar days you can’t afford all this, because emancipation has already won, and feminism is about to win. And then this holiday “March 8” will forever remain only a kind of relict ritual: something like a masquerade, at which a former woman once a year cosplays as a weak, gentle, and dependent creature, and wipes away a wet tear from her long eyelashes, hugging the bouquet extended to her, or simply because she was picked up... And the man, accordingly, once a year cosplays as a strong, confident, and kind male, capable of taking her by the hand and in his arms, and who, for this very reason, never has to raise his hand... I I somehow don’t believe in such a scenario. And I don't want him. I want girls and boys to continue to remain very different, no matter what modern Clara Zetkin thinks about this. And so that a woman does not have to wait for a special calendar day on which!