Russian Super Models & Aryan Babies.....or April's Secret Origin Story. Time for some humble bragging, as I think I have mentioned before customers at work have more than a few times asked if I am or more realistically were a model.

Time for some humble bragging, as I think I have mentioned before customers at work have more than a few times asked if I am or more realistically were a model.

doing my best Russian super model selfie pose

To be asked if I am a model is flattering and really makes my day. Most of these welcome compliments come from older women so perhaps to them I don't look completely over the hill.

To be serious for a moment I never dreamed that someone would ever say that about me. It was only a few years ago when I hated to look at myself in the mirror and that I feared that transition would be an impossibility, that I was too ugly too male.

The other day I was feeling rather unattractive when one such customer approached me. She said, "you must be a model, you are so tall and thin"......followed by a pregnant pause....then she added "and pretty too". 

LOL, she had no idea how close she came to death at that moment. Oh well two out of three ain't bad.

Later in the day a very well dressed and rather handsome man came in. He said that I looked like a Russian super model.

damn, I wish

For once I was at a loss for words (did I mention that he was really hot). A quick discussion of my racial/ethnic background followed. No, I told him I am English but perhaps there is a rouge Viking gene in there (you know from all the raping and pillaging) to account for blonde hair and blue eyes.

Honestly I am often asked if I am Scandinavian, I usually joking reply that yes, I am pure Aryan.  

Later in the day I was speaking with my mother about the super model comment and she told me an interesting story. My parents emigrated from the UK to Canada when I was very young. Passage had been booked on the Queen Elizabeth but a strike meant that they sailed on the German liner Bremen.

Not the one sunk in 1941 obviously but rather the post war Bremen, the flagship of the Norddeutscher Lloyd line (North German Lloyd). The Bremen was actually the former French troopship Pasteur that was refitted at great cost in 1957-1959 for sixty-five million DM.

On July 9, 1959, she began the Bremerhaven - Southampton - Cherbourg - New York route. A luxury ship she was considered one of the most beautiful passenger liners of her time.

OK sorry for the history detour, I can't resist, back to the story. My pink skin, blonde hair and blue eyes were apparently the subject of much on board appreciation. One German couple took a particular interest remarking that, "I was exactly what Hitler wanted".

Yikes...shades of Boys from Brazil. That reminds me of the Nazi Lebensborn program to promote the breeding of pure Aryan children between SS men and racially pure European women.

cheesy 1961 movie about Lebensorn program

The most famous child of this program was Frida Lyngstad, the dark haired singer for ABBA.

end note:

The Breman made its last New York run in 1971, after going through a series of owners the proud ship that was first launched in 1939 and took Canadian troops home after the war and French troops to Vietnam sank in the Indian Ocean in 1980 on its way to be broken for scrap in Taiwan.  Perhaps a better fate....

Hugs,

April