Ten Dollars and Two Goats for the Ugly One!

Oh, this beautiful planet, this fantastic sphere...such resplendent secrets you hold in store!

Somewhere in southern Bulgaria--just south of the donkey, make a right at the at the weird-looking rock, if you see the rabid she-wolf chained to the petrified witch you've gone too far--they still sell women in the town square.

Even though I'm sure this is a tradition that has been a part of the Roma culture for a long time, interestingly, the ugly old mothers have yet to learn that they should NOT stand so close to their daughters and show the prospective husbands what their daughters will look like in twenty years. Yikes! And it's not like it was so easy a sale to begin with, mama!

"At the market in the village of Mogila near Stara Zagora, the price of a beautiful young woman is said to be several thousand levs/euros."

So...wait--how much do non-beautiful girls fetch? I mean, that would seem a more relevant question for this journalist to answer, seeing as none of the girls in the accompanying photos could be considered beautiful.

And what about interviewing some of the men, the vaunted customers? How do they save up so much money? What is it they do for a living? What do they look for in a bride when they go shopping? Do they check their teeth like they do those of horses? Is virginity prized in the women, yet never expected from the men doing the purchasing? How often do girls go to these before they sell, on average?

Why is there so little text accompanying these photos, about such a fascinating subject?

Can I interview the person who wrote this article? And then get funded to go cover this event myself next year?

I think the world would be a lot better off if I could, for some hard-to-describe reason...

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