I admit it, one of my guilty pleasures was once my obsession with the show 90 Day Fiancé, so much show that I even started quite a popular Facebook group dedicated to the show and its messiness. The cast is quite diverse, but their stories are pretty streamlined into three different categories.
The first one is the couple who met on a vacation that was just long enough but too short at the same time. The second couple met via the internet and started as a “friendship,” which turned romantic in just under a week and the third being an email-order-bride type scenario. Both types of internet romances are almost exclusively between a usually much older and/or less attractive person from the United States and a younger and/or more attractive person from elsewhere. All of the couples face the very tough decision of bringing the usually younger and more attractive person from the war-torn, poverty-stricken and/or underdeveloped country to live permanently in the United States.
The show never showcases couples from similarly different economic backgrounds country hopping. Oh no, it instead is a look inside what happens when sex tourism grows a heart.
The producers and the audience are clearly both in on the joke.
There is a similar show happening right now on social media—The Passport Bros show. Maybe not a show, but definitely a peculiar movement, where mostly Black men who cannot find women to love them in the United States pay the U.S. government passport fees in order to get p-ssy.
The movement is usually accompanied by negative commentary on Black women who’ve opted out of dating them or anyone at all for that matter, all the while getting to indulge in anti-Black fetishism and ignoring blatant racism in these countries in order to do so. The Passport Bros movement, from the outside, looks just like a bunch of creepy-ass weirdos who exploit women who will only sleep with them because the women are poor. Apparently, I was wrong, and it was explained to me that it is actually a group of distinguished, upstanding Black men (and occasionally desperate men of other races) who seek companionship with foreign women because foreign women are bred to be wives and they are looking for a partnership with women whose goal it is to create families. However, it is a bit odd to describe something as a partnership when one party does not have nearly the same resources. Most people would not go into a partnership with someone who lacks the same or similar capital, whether it be financial or social, but they will surely exploit that person’s need as a resource for their gain.
If you look at many of the videos of the Passport Bros, they are men who are not classically attractive (socially as well as physically), some with more meager means than others. But definitely, more than the women they seek to attract and who finally are going to get the attention of women who would easily be out of their league were they not dealing with abject poverty or at least being on the disadvantaged end of a currency exchange rate between their country and the U.S. Somehow in the midst of delusion, that could possibly be a result of cholera, these men have convinced themselves that the women who are desperate for a better life somehow love them, instead of the women just possibly don’t have the same options.
I mean, would you rather cry in a Jeepney or a Jeep Liberty?
These men have convinced themselves that the reason their relationship exists isn’t that it is built on exploitation. Passport Bros is just another excuse to blame women for a man not being f-ckable. These guys really cannot be kidding themselves, even the concept is built on the delusion that these women who live far away can somehow see something in these men that the American women who’ve deemed them undesirable from up close interactions cannot. It is highly unlikely that these women are so attractive that they do not have access to any attractive men in their own countries, but somehow Mike Mike, the used car salesman with male pattern baldness, gynecomastia, and who comes with his own c-pap machine is a sex symbol to them?! Oh, I know. It is his personality that manages to shine through despite a silence-inducing language barrier.
Ironically the Twitter account @passportbros, which champions unattractive men to seek out desperate women who need money and a better life, is very much anti-sex worker while simultaneously being one of its biggest supporters. I’m not here to make an argument against or for sex work in general, but it must be acknowledged that some sex work is survival sex, and women who live so far below the poverty line that we cannot imagine here in the states, would be more willing to make negotiations with themselves than if they had better options.
When going down the icky rabbit hole of Passport Bro footage, I came across the YouTube channel @passportbrowingman9486. Two of his videos give a rundown of the top ten countries a Passport Bro should visit, “especially Black men,” in order to exploit women. Here is the list with commentary:
#10. Ukraine
The same Ukraine, whose refugees are having a hard time adjusting to the diversity of England, are definitely excited about Black men, wink.
#9. Belarus
The YouTuber was so acquainted with the country that he pronounced it Bowl-air-is. Belarus has a thriving mail-order-bride market than its neighbor on the list and the map, Ukraine.
#8. Germany
Fortunately, in Germany, feminism is not as bad as in other Western countries and there is a thriving prostitution market, or as he calls it, “PFP,” which means Pay For Play. Despite the resurgence of xenophobic right-wing politics and the unfortunately strong Euro, he still recommends it as a place to dip the driest of tips.
#7. Costa Rica
The YouTuber describes Costa Rican women as the Vanilla version of Latin women. He also talked about the PFP market. I do not know if the channel is run by the same people who run the Twitter account, but I am sure their ideologies are the same, which would include condemning that sort of practice for American women. He also gave a caveat to Costa Rican women when he mentions, through his slight speech impediment, that his “success” rate was not as high due to colorism and the fact that the area is not as poor as other countries.
The jokes write themselves.
#6. Peru
The narrator describes the biggest advantage of Peru is that the women drastically outnumber the men and the dollar goes far. Despite their colorism issues, he recommends it to his Black male target audience.
#5. Dominican Republic
The Dominican Republic comes with a reputation that precedes itself. While the narrator mentions that the women are sleazy and will even come and grab a man’s crotch, this is still a place the bros recommend to find a wife because the freeness of the women aids in helping “free you from your simp mentality.” He alludes to the laws in the U.S. being so skewed against men that a man might get in trouble for sexual harassment simply by shaking a woman’s hand (which is crazy because rape has a super low conviction rate, but apparently shaking hands is going to be the downfall of men).
#4. Brazil
Of course, we know Brazil has colorism issues, “sex is not a big deal,” he says as if he, the same named Twitter, doesn’t spew misogyny, including calling women sexual slurs.
#3. Thailand
Thailand is where the Passport Bro narrator mentions, “the dollar is killing it,” yeah, that doesn’t sound exploitative at all.
2. The Philippines
Here, our Passport Bro actually brings up the show 90 Day Fiancé while referring to a couple comprised of a 60-year-old man dating a 19-year-old Filipina woman (he was actually 58 and thankfully, they have divorced, I wonder why it did not work out).
#1. Colombia
Colombia rounds out his top ten, where he again uses the phrase “the dollar is killing it.” He does give a warning to the listener that they should be careful there because “the government there raised the taxes on the people…the people there are in survival mode.” Survival mode, huh?!
@passportbros #passportbros ♬ original sound – ✈️
The themes that most of the countries have in common are a far-reaching dollar and even further doughy-eyed desperation, oh, and colorism. The narrator talks negatively about feminism while describing how hopeless the women’s situations are in each country. There is more mind-blowing commentary concerning the subject in other dark parts of the internet. One of the most disgusting things I have seen attached to the hashtag was a video of a Filipina woman talking about American men escaping the plantation by dating non-American women. Another video was a man talking about himself and his friend who both visited a foreign country and bought their female companions Popeye’s chicken; he recounts how the women were astounded by the immense wealth displayed by buying chicken.
I mean, in today’s economy, I get it sis!
Having lived above and below the poverty line as an adult, I can tell you one thing. You move differently in those spaces because one provides you with options that the other literally can’t afford you, and you can’t afford in it. Many of these Passport Bro spaces disparage Black American women while recruiting foreign women to don caricatures of those same Black women. Instead of examining self, they would rather go and get some sweatshop p-ssy to assuage their inadequacies and compulsorily stroke their egos, as well as other things. The movement is purposely built on seeking out women whom they can control because those women have limited options.
Passport Bros use misogynoir and $20 bills to assure themselves that they are lovable and that it is not their fault that American women don’t want them.
You know, the thing about vacations is; they are an excellent escape from reality.
